Updated 17 April 1997
This page is for anyone looking for these family names on the Web. Burnham is my father's name, Meddleton my mother's maiden name.
Are you looking for family history? I don't take much interest in genealogy myself, so I have little to offer you. However, there are some snippets of information below. If you want to explore more family history and your roots are in this part of the world, start at the UK and Ireland Genealogy Index.
Are you looking for Burnhams or Meddletons on the Web? You can try the links below. If you would like to add the URL of your Web page or your email address to this page, you are welcome to do so: just email me with the information.
Burnham is an example of an English family name derived from an ancestor's place of origin. This type of surname is the most common in England. Other groups include names based on occupations (e.g., Taylor), kinship (e.g., Robinson), descriptions or nicknames (e.g., Redhead) and those from outside England (e.g., MacGregor from Scotland, Price from Wales, O'Hara from Ireland and Grosvenor from France).
There are many places called Burnham in England, including those in the counties of Somerset, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. That means there were many chances to be called Burnham, and there must be many Burnhams who are not related to each other, even as far back as the 13th or 14th centuries.
One thing to remember is that when your ancestor first came to be called 'Burnham', he was almost certainly no longer living in Burnham. The additional name would not have distinguished him from other Johns or Williams if he had still been in his original home.
My own family seems to have been settled in the Bristol area, particularly the town of Kingswood, for several generations at least. One of them was the chairman of the then Kingswood Urban District Council (the equivalent of Mayor). I am the wanderer of the family, and moved out of the area. There are many Burnhams in the Bristol telephone directory, and I doubt if many are closely related. It is likely, but I don't know for certain, that my family takes its name from Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset.
Burnham is an Anglo-Saxon name. The reference books give several different derivations for the name, that may apply in different places:
burn + ham (long 'a', related to 'home') = 'the
homestead by the burn (brook)'
burn + hamm (short 'a', related to 'hem') = 'the land
along the edge of the burn'
burnum (dative plural of 'burn') = 'at the brooks'
According to one book the first is the most likely derivation in Norfolk, the second in Somerset and the third in Lincolnshire. Another reference gives as an alternative derivation in some cases 'brun' related to the word 'brown', so perhaps meaning the 'brown homestead'.
Here are Burnhams I have come across on the Internet:
Carl H.
Burnham: http://sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/~burnham
Dixwell Burnham:
dixwell@netime.com
There are quite a few more with their own Web pages. Try the AltaVista search engine to get an up-to-date list.
Meddleton, unlike Burnham, is not a very common name. I guess that it is also an Anglo-Saxon place name and a variant of Middleton, the 'middle place'. (For a full explanation of the meanings of the common Anglo-Saxon 'tun' or 'ton', you'll have to find a scholarly work.) My grandfather came from Launceston, Cornwall. As far as I know, all Meddletons originate from the Cornwall/Devon border. There are Meddletons in Australia who came from Gunnislake, about twenty kilometres from Launceston.
This is the only Meddleton that I know of with an email address or URL. If you are a Meddleton and stumble across this page, do get in touch.
Christopher Meddleton: 101606.2277@compuserve.com
This information has been contributed by Richard Burnham of Wise Words.
Copyright © 1995-7 Richard Burnham.
