Old English brand, brond "fire, flame, destruction by fire; firebrand, piece of burning wood, torch," and (poetic) "sword," from Proto-Germanic *brandaz "a burning" (source also of Old Norse brandr, Old High German brant, Old Frisian brond "firebrand; blade of a sword," German brand "fire"), from PIE root *gwher- "to heat, warm."

Meaning "iron instrument for branding" is from 1828. Meaning "mark made by a hot iron" (1550s), especially on a cask, etc., to identify the maker or quality of its contents, broadened by 1827 to marks made in other ways, then to "a particular make of goods" (1854). Brand-name is from 1889; brand-loyalty from 1961. Old French brand, brant, Italian brando "sword" are from Germanic (compare brandish).

"quite new," 1560s, from brand (n.) + new. The notion is "new as a glowing metal fresh from the forge" (Shakespeare has fire-new; Middle English had span-neue "brand new," c. 1300, from Old Norse span-nyr, from span "chip of wood," perhaps as something likely to be new-made). Popularly bran-new.

fem. proper name, Scottish (introduced to a wider English audience in Scott's "The Pirate," 1822), from Old Norse brandr, literally "sword" or torch" (see brand (n.)). Little-used as a given name in U.S. before 1925, but a top-30 name for girls born there 1944-1966: The popular "Brenda Starr" newspaper comic strip debuted in 1940.

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to heat, warm."

It forms all or part of: brand; brandish; brandy; brimstone; brindled; forceps; Fornax; fornicate; fornication; fornix; furnace; hypothermia; thermal; thermo-; Thermopylae; Thermos.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit gharmah "heat;" Old Persian Garmapada-, name of the fourth month, corresponding to June/July, from garma- "heat;" Hittite war- "to burn;" Armenian jerm "warm;" Greek thermos "warm;" Latin formus "warm," fornax "oven;" Old Irish fogeir "heated;" Old English bærnan "to kindle."

phonetic coding system, 1959, from sound (n.1) + brand-name suffix -ex.

1949, proprietary name of a popular brand of cellulose or plastic adhesive tape in Great Britain.

"spirits distilled from other liquors" (especially wine), 1650s, abbreviation of brandy-wine (1620s) from Dutch brandewijn "burnt wine," earlier brand-wijn, so called because it is distilled (compare German cognate Branntwein and Czech palenka "brandy," from paliti "to burn"). The Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania, site of the 1777 Revolutionary War battle, supposedly was so named 17c. by the Dutch explorers for the color of its waters.

In familiar use abbreviated as brandy as early as 1657; but the fuller form was retained in official use (customs tariffs, acts of parliament, etc.) down to the end of 17th c., being latterly, as the spelling shows, regarded as a compound of brandy + wine. [OED]