Borland
A Scottish and northern English surname usually understood as “boar land” or a variant of “bordland,” land held for a lord’s table.
The #8,253 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 76,917 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The name is usually treated as locational or topographic. One explanation takes it as “boar land,” from Old English elements meaning boar and land, while another links it to Bordland/Boreland, a term for land kept by a lord for provisioning the household. Some 19th-century writers also connected it with a place-name in Fife, Scotland, suggesting a local origin for at least some families.
History
The surname is found in Scotland and the north of England, and it appears in older records in spellings such as Boreland and Bordland. The form has been explained in different ways by different writers, which is common for names shaped by both place-names and dialect. In modern usage, Borland is established as a surname rather than a widely used place-name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
A 19th-century source explicitly glossed Borland as “boar-land,” though other scholars preferred a Bordland explanation.
From the historical record
“OF FAMILY NAMES. 75 BORLAND. (Cor. Br.) Local. The highland; the swelling or rising land ; from bor, swelling, rising, and land. If from the Saxon, it signifies the land belonging to the common people. Bordlands were lands which the lords kept in their hands for the maintenance of their board or table. Borland is…”
— An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names