A burgher is someone who lives in a particular town, especially as a real member of that town — a citizen, not a visitor passing through. In older European history the word had a sharper social edge: burghers were the townspeople in the middle, not nobles and not peasants from the fields. They kept shops, sat on councils, and guarded town rights. In ordinary English now it can sound old or bookish; we would usually say resident or townspeople. A later, more special use grew out of the same idea: in Sri Lanka, and in some South African history, Burgher became the name of communities with mixed European ancestry. That is the same word, not a different one, but it is a narrower, local meaning. On the page it looks dangerously like burger, the sandwich.