Has any other Irish-American researching the BURNS surname discovered that the name was originally BERN or BEIRN or BEIRNE or O'BEIRNE in the early 1800s back in Ireland? These spelling variations of the same surname were apparently very common back in the Emerald Isle, when so few people could read and write, and almost no one could spell. It certainly raises havoc with genealogists; at least it did with this one. Fran Weeks