The Burgher people are a Eurasian ethnic group, historically from Sri Lanka, consisting mainly of male-line descendants of European colonists from the 16th to 20th centuries (mostly Portuguese, Dutch, German and British) and local women. The name is not to be confused with the English word “burgher” which simply means a person who resides in a borough, or a member of the middle class. Today the native language of the Burghers is English, but historically other languages were spoken, in particular the Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese, a creole language based on Portuguese, Tamil, and Sinhala.
