branden

From Middle Dutch branden, a backformation from the past forms brande, gebrant of barnen, bernen, from Old Dutch *bernan, metathesis of brennan, from Proto-West Germanic *brannijan, from Proto-Germanic *brannijaną. Displaced the form barnen. The sense “to write to a storage medium” is a semantic loan from English burn. According to Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, the Middle Dutch past forms brande, gebrant were formed anew from barnde, gebarnt by analogy with the related noun brand (“fire”), thus involving a kind of "re-metathesis". However, it appears more plausible that those forms survived unaltered (alongside the regularised forms) because the consonant cluster -nd- hampered the metathesis (as it clearly did in brand). The regular a-vocalism is due to Rückumlaut (cf. German brannte, gebrannt). Only the backformation of the present stem brand- would have been influenced by the noun.