bairnn.

Etymology: Common Germanic: Old English bearn = Old Frisian bern, Old Saxon, Old High German, Middle High German, Gothic, Old Norse, Danish, Swedish barn, (Middle Dutch baren) < Germanic *barno-(m), < beran to bear. Lost in German and Dutch; also in southern English, where the modern representation of Old English bearn would have been bern (compare fern) or barn (compare arm, warn). In fact, berne survived in the south to 1300, barn still survives in northern English, and was used by Shakespeare; bairn is the Scotch form (compare fairn, airm, wairn), occasionally used in literary English since 1700. It is doubtful whether the berne, bearn of some 17th cent. English writers was a survival of the early southern form, or a variant spelling of bairn. The plural bærn in Ormin is the Old Norse börn, hence it is probable that the northern singular barn is as much of Old Norse as of Old English origin.