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Where have all the Burghers gone? – By Pelham Juriansz The word “Burgher” is a very strange word indeed. In fact some might wonder at my name wondering if I am some sort of “Sudda(white man), having a strange foreign name. The name Jansz is a more familiar name but not Juriansz. Then people are familiar with the names of Brohier, Muller, Ludowyke, etc, because of R.L. Brohier, Carl Muller and Professor E.F.C. Ludowyke, all of whom are distinguished writers. As the Dictionary mentions, the word “burgher” means citizen-derived from the word “Burgh” of “Borough”. But, few people are aware that it has a racial connotation- that it refers to descendants of European settlers in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon. In the European Middle Ages, a burgher was any freeman of a burgh or borough; or any inhabitant of a borough, a person who lives in town. (Even in modern German the word ...