Borough

A borough is an administrative division in various countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing township although, in practice, official use of the term varies widely. The word borough derives from common Germanic *burg, meaning fort: compare with bury (England), burgh (Scotland), Burg (Germany), borg (Scandinavia), burcht (Dutch) and the Germanic borrowing present in neighbouring Indo-european languages such as borgo (Italian), bourg (French) and burgo (Spanish and Portuguese). The incidence of these words as suffixes to place names (for example, Canterbury, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Gothenburg) usually indicates that they were once fortified settlements. In the Middle Ages, boroughs were...