In medieval times, when a person died, a mound of stones or earth was raised over the body, literally making a hump of them. Although we nowadays tend to dig a hole for the coffin, the act is still referred to as to bury the person. On Ordnance Survey maps, these humps or mounds are still referred to as barrows.

Around the time of the Romans, defending Celts saw an advantage in building their forts on these areas of raised ground so that, over the centuries, the word burgh came to refer not only to the mound itself but also to the fort built upon it. Eventually, burgh came to mean any defended place. An example of this was a small fortified place contructed midway between the Abbeys of Whitby and Jarrow in the North East of England. It came to be know as the Middel Burgh (now the industrial town of Middlesbrough). As all documents of the time were hadwritten, the reading of them could cause misinterpretation as the final 'g' could be read as a 'y', thus creating Bury instead of Burg.

In most medieval maps, many towns were called Burg. There was one on the Cross-Pennine Roman Road (Burg) and another on the western edge (Burgham - home on a mound). Although "burgh" seems to have mostly retained its original spelling in Scotland, for some inexplicable reason in England, someone decided to change the spelling to Brough (pronounced "bruff") and Brougham (pronounced, don't laugh, "broom"). Thus Middelburg became Middleborough and, eventually, Middlesbrough.

Almost any urban area in Europe is now described as a borough (with a borough council) and in some places, the mayor is known as the Burgermaster or Burgermeister. The word is also used in culinary circles where a congealed lump of meat (rather than a slice) is called a burger. Another related word is berg as in Iceberg.