De Burchgrave is the name of our oldest known ancestor as it was written in his hometown, in his time. With the passage of decades and therefore the evolution in spelling and also with the knowledge and skills of priest or official became and become a lot of variants or spellingforms present. Within our family alone we already find beside De Burchgrave also: de Burchgraeve, Burchgrave, de Burggrave, Burggrave, de Burghgraeve, de Burghgrave, Burghgrave and Burgrave. In other families 'Burchgrave' we find: Borchgraaf, de Borchgraef, Borchgraef, Borchgrave, de Borggrave, Burccrof, Burggraaf, de Burggraeve, Burggraeve and de Burgraeve. Below is a map showing a schematic representation of the modern distribution

Some of the modern variants can not be attributed to one particular family, but rather to a particular location. So it seems that different families, other old spellings, at the introduction of the civil registry in a particular area received one particular spellingform.

Deburghgraeve seems to be the spelling in which almost every 'Burchgrave' in the region between Diksmuide and Roeselare (solid circles) was registered. Our family as well, from which later the variant De Burghgraeve emerged. From our core region, there was migration of family members to Normadie and Michigan. Very likely Deburghgraeve also originated in other places.

Deburchgraeve is the largest variant in the coastal region, between Veurne en Ostend. De Burggrave concentrates itself then in the Land of Waas and Burggraaf only surfaces north of the national border in the Netherlands. Burggraeve has on the other hand a more general distribution. Other variants are De Burchgraeve, Deburggraeve, Burggrave and Burghgraeve.

The name thus occurs mainly in the provinces of West and East Flanders with significantly less distribution south of the linguistic border, only west of it, in the French Westhoek ('west corner', part of Northern France that used to be Dutch speaking), does the name still occur in reasonable numbers and further with migration to Lille.

For Belgium you can see the distribution of the variants on http://www.familienaam.be (Nl), just type in the name you search for.