Find out how popular the last name Burgher is in the United States and learn more about the meaning, history, and race and ethnic origin of people in America who are named Burgher.

Burgher, like all of the last names we have data for, is identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a surname which has more than 100 occurrences in the United States in the Decennial Census survey. The most recent statistics we have for the Burgher surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Burgher in America

Burgher is the 21495th most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Burgher surname appeared 1,215 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0 people would have the surname Burgher.

We can also compare 2010 data for Burgher to data from the previous census in 2000. The table below contains all of the statistics for both years in a side-by-side comparison.

The history of the last name Burgher

The surname BURGHER originated in the medieval Low Countries, now part of modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands. It emerged in the early 13th century, derived from the Middle Dutch word "burchter" meaning a citizen or freeman of a town or borough.

The earliest recorded instances of the name can be traced back to the coastal regions of Flanders and Zeeland, where merchants and tradesmen who held citizenship in the prosperous port cities were referred to as "burghers." This status afforded them certain privileges and rights within the city walls, distinguishing them from the landed nobility or peasantry.

One of the earliest known burghers was Willem van Burgher, a wealthy cloth merchant from Ghent, Flanders, who lived in the late 13th century. His family's coat of arms, featuring three golden towers on a blue field, can still be seen on the facade of the historic Burgher's House in Ghent's city center.

In the 14th century, the name appears in the records of the Hanseatic League, a powerful commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns across Northern Europe. The merchant Jan van Burgher, born in Bruges in 1324, was a prominent member of the Hanseatic League, trading goods throughout the Baltic and North Sea regions.

As the Dutch established colonies and trading outposts in the 17th and 18th centuries, the BURGHER name spread to places like the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). Abraham Burgher, born in Amsterdam in 1642, was one of the early Dutch settlers in the Cape Colony and is considered an ancestor of many South African families with the BURGHER surname.

Another notable figure was the 18th-century Dutch philosopher and theologian Johannes Jacobus Burgher, born in 1734 in Leiden. He was a prominent figure in the Dutch Enlightenment and a vocal advocate for religious tolerance and free speech.

In the 19th century, the BURGHER name gained prominence in the United States through immigrants from the Low Countries. One example is the American politician and lawyer Gideon John Tucker Burgher, born in 1833 in New York, who served as a member of the New York State Assembly.

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Burgher

We also have some data on the ancestry of people with the surname Burgher.

The below race categories are the modified race categories used in the Census Bureau's population estimates program. All people were categorized into six mutually exclusive racial and Hispanic origin groups:

1. White only
2. Black only
3. American Indian and Alaskan Native only
4. Asian and Pacific Islander only
5. Hispanic
6. Two or More Races

For the most recent 2010 census data, the race/ethnic origin breakdown for Burgher was:

Note: Any fields showing (S) means the data was suppressed for privacy so that the data does not in any way identify any specific individuals.

Since we have data from the previous census in 2000, we can also compare the values to see how the popularity of Burgher has changed in the 10 years between the two census surveys.

Data source

The last name data and ethnic breakdown of last names is sourced directly from the Decennial Census survey, conducted every 10 years by the United States Census Bureau.

The history and meaning of the name Burgher was researched and written by our team of onomatology and genealogy experts.

If you have a correction or suggestion to improve the history of Burgher, please contact us.

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