A bourne is an intermittent

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

, flowing from a spring. Frequent in chalk and limestone country where the rock becomes saturated with winter rain, that slowly drains away until the rock becomes dry, when the stream ceases. The word is from the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

language of England. The word can be found in northern England in placenames such as: Redbourne and Legbourne but is commonly in use in southern

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

(particularly

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

) as a name for a small river, particularly in compound names such as winterbourne. A winterbourne is a stream or river that is dry through the summer months. Bourne is used as a place name or as a part of a place name, usually in

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

downland Downland, chalkland, chalk downs or just downs are areas of open chalk hills, such as the North Downs. This term is used to describe the characteristic landscape in southern England where chalk is exposed at the surface. The name "downs" is deriv ...

countryside. Alternative forms are bourn or borne or born. The apparent variant, borne found in the placename:

Camborne Camborne (from Cornish language, Cornish ''Cambron'', "crooked hill") is a town in Cornwall, England. The population at the 2011 Census was 20,845. The northern edge of the parish includes a section of the South West Coast Path, Hell's Mouth, C ...

, arises from the

Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or , ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language, Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. Along with Welsh language, Welsh and Breton language, Breton, Cornish descends from Common Brittonic, ...

and is in fact a

false friend In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ('pre ...

: it refers to a hill (Cornish: ''bronn'', from Common Brythonic ''*brunda''; compare Welsh ''bryn''). Born/borne in German also means fount, or spring, and is related to the Indo-European root, *bhreu. That born/borne appears throughout Europe as a placename is also an important clue that this spelling is an etymological precursor to the Middle English bourne/burn. Cf. Burn (landform), in common use in Scotland and North East England especially, but also found (in placenames) elsewhere in England such as:

Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the River Ribble, Ribble Valley, east of Preston ...

, Gisburn, Woburn, Kilburn, Winkburn, and so forth. For rivers and places named Bourne or having this word as part of the name, see

Bourne (disambiguation) Bourne may refer to: Places UK * Bourne, Lincolnshire, a town ** Bourne Abbey ** Bourne Eau ** Bourne Grammar School ** Bourne railway station * Bourne (electoral division), West Sussex * Bourne SSSI, Avon, a Site of Special Scientific Inte ...

References

{{rivers, streams and springs Water streams Fluvial landforms Geomorphology Hydrology Rivers Bodies of water