Burgess
Masculine · “a freeman of a borough”
Burgess is a job title that became a surname and then a first name. A burgess was a freeman of a town — someone with the right to trade there and, crucially, to send members to a parliament. The word is the same one that gives English bourgeois, and the two have had opposite careers: one became a term of respect, the other an insult.
How old is the name Burgess?
Burgess first appears in US birth records in 1884 — 141 years ago. The typical Burgess alive today was born around 1938, making them about 87 years old. About 400 people named Burgess are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Burgess most popular?
Burgess peaked in 1890, reaching #884 nationally. See the whole 1890 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Germanic burg, a fortified place to Burgess
The story of Burgess
In the summer of 1619 the Virginia Company's settlers met in the church at Jamestown, two men from each of eleven settlements, and sat as the first elected assembly anywhere in English America. They called themselves burgesses because that was the word for a town's elected representative at home, and the House of Burgesses kept the name for a hundred and fifty years — long enough for Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to sit in it. The same meeting is also where the first recorded Africans in the colony arrive in the record, a few weeks later, which is the other half of what began that summer.
Meaning
a freeman of a borough
Behind the word sits the Germanic burg, a fortified place, which survives in English borough, burgh and the endings of a hundred town names. A burgess was a man of the burg. French took the same root and built bourgeois, which meant exactly the same thing until the nineteenth century turned it into a way of accusing somebody of comfortable conventionality. Burgess never picked that up. In English it stayed what it was: a townsman with rights, which in the medieval world was a considerable thing to be.
How the name formed
- Germanic burg, a fortified place
- burgess as the English word for a town freeman
- the French line produces bourgeois from the same root
- the House of Burgesses meets at Jamestown in 1619
- used as an American given name from the 1880s
Related forms: Bourgeois · Burger · Burgiss
Pronouncing Burgess
BUR-jiss
Two syllables with the stress at the front and a soft g. The second syllable is unstressed and gets swallowed, which is why the spelling with one s and the spelling with two are both in the record.
Nicknames for Burgess
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1884
- Most boys named
- 192228 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #884reached in 1890
- Change vs 1999
- +40.0%7 in 2010, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Burgess in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Bourgeois in French — related form
- Burger in German — related form
- Burgiss in English — spelling variant
Burgesss among us
people named Burgess are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Burgess sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It has the weight of an old English word without being a word anybody now uses.
- It works as a first name or a middle name and carries family history well.
- The meaning is honorable and easy to explain: a free man of a town.
- It reads unmistakably as a surname, and some people will assume it is one.
- The name is entirely absent from current use, so there is no model for how it wears on a child.
- It will be misheard as Burgiss, Burgess and Burges by turns.
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Burgess
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Burgesss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 400 people named Burgess are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Burgess in 2025?
- Burgess is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Burgess with classmates?
- Burgess will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More B names
The most-given names starting with B, all years combined.
Brian#339 · Benjamin#11 · Brandon#261 · Bryan#336 · Bruce#536 · Billy#1068 · Bobby#1097 · Bradley#403
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Burgess? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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