Blackburn

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A former mill town in Lancashire, northwest England, known for its cotton industry ; a family name of English origin carried by various notable people
2. An industrial town in the county of Lancashire in northwest England ; a surname borne by several well-known individuals
3. A post-industrial town in northwest England's Lancashire ; a hereditary family name shared by a number of public figures

Etymology: Blackburn is a town in Lancashire, northwest England, and its name is a plain compound of two Old English words: "blæc", meaning "dark", and "burna", meaning "stream". Put together, the name describes a dark, perhaps murky or peat-stained, watercourse, which fits the landscape of the small river that runs through the town. Place names built this way were common across England, where settlers gave rivers and streams names based on how they looked. The name is recorded in Old English-era sources in forms close to its modern spelling, so the town's identity seems to have been fixed by the stream rather than by any later event or person. The pattern is a straightforward one: a descriptive adjective joined to a word for water, with the stream's character giving the settlement its name.