Brunesford is another suggestive name[1] Brunman is mentioned as a personal name in Anglo-Saxon records of the eleventh century, and examples of the name Bruning are somewhat numerous in documents of the same period.[2] At the present time old place-names, of which the word Braun forms the chief part, such as Braunschweig or Brunswick, are common in Germany.[3]The custom of calling people by colour-names from their personal appearance, or places after them, was clearly not peculiar to our own country. It is probable that the name Brunswick was derived from the brown complexion of its original inhabitants. The map published by Ripley, based on the official ethnological survey of Germany, shows that parts of the country near Brunswick have a higher percentage of brunettes than the districts further north. Beddoe also made observations on a number of Brunswick peasantry, and records some remarkable facts relating to the proportion of brunettes among those who came under his observation.[4]
In view of this, and the evidence relating to the use of the Anglo-Saxon word brun in English place-names, we are not, I think, justified in deciding that all English names which begin with Brun, modernized into Burn in many cases by the well-known shifting of the r sound, have been derived from brun, a bourn or stream. rather than from brun, brown. Such names as Bruninga-feld[5] and Brunesham point to the opposite conclusion, that Brun in such names refers to people, probably so named from their complexions. If a large proportion of the settlers in the counties of Buckingham and Hertford were of a brown complexion, it is clear that they would have been less likely to have been called Brun or Brown
