Reservoirs have always been important for human life. Any settlement directly depended on the source of water. Therefore, in the compulsory vocabulary of all languages there is one or more words to designate a stream of water flowing along a constant channel. In Russian, this is the noun "river". Now the semantics of this word has been lost, one can only guess what meaning those who invented it put into it. But why is the river called a river? And what lies in the names of such water arteries as the Volga, Lena, Dnieper, Neva? What was washed in the Moika, who turned the Euphrates upside down? All this is described below.
Etymology of the word "river"
This lexical unit appeared in Russian in the 11th century. The fact that it existed even in Proto-Slavic proves the existence of many words with similar sound and meaning in other linguistic systems. For example, riueka in Serbo-Croatian, rzeka in Polish, rieka in Slovak, reka in Czech and Slovenian, rіka in Ukrainian. Since it is present in the Slavic languages of both the eastern, and western, and southern groups, it becomes clear that all these words had a singleprogenitor. Also in Russian there are words that are no longer distinguished as cognate in modern morphology, but it turns out that they were such earlier. We are talking about the lexemes "swarm", "rush", "fly". They all have one common seme - something to do with movement.
There are at least two versions of where it came from. According to the first theory, the Slavic root "river-" was formed as a result of alternating vowels from the Old Irish rian with the meaning "river, road". In Old English there is a word rid (stream), in Middle German - rin (flow of water). The Latin rivus means "brook", and this also speaks in defense of this theory. Well, from him came river (river) in modern English.
The second version says that the morpheme rek is of Indo-European origin. It is related to the ancient root renos, meaning "flow". Supporters of this theory cite as an example the name of the river Rhine, which, in their opinion, means "flowing". Similar semantics in Old Indian rayas. You can also pay attention to riyate (to move, start to flow). And over time, the word went through a phonetic transformation for a more convenient pronunciation. That's why the river was named river.
There is also the ancient Indian word rekha (row, stripe, scratch). It is more similar to the discussed noun in Russian, but the semantics does not really converge.
Almost all hydronyms on the territory of modern Russia are the same age as the word "river". Therefore, their origin is also a kind of mystery, shrouded in darkness. But you can still learn at least something about some of them.
Volga
Why was she named that? There is a fairly simple and logical explanation. Some linguists are sure that the hydronym Volga comes from the word "moisture". The fact is that when people settled near a reservoir, it was their only source of moisture. Usually they did not know about the existence of any other water bodies due to the fact that they did not have the opportunity to travel. It is not surprising that most of the hydronyms in translation from ancient languages simply mean "river", "water", "moisture".
In the Old Russian language, there was full agreement, that is, the development of secondary vowels: gates - gates, city - city. So the river was first called Moisture, and then this proper name was transformed into Vologa, but over time it was reduced to a shorter form "Volga".
There is another version, according to which the name of this river has B altic roots. This language group has the word valka, which means "a stream flowing through a swamp".
And indeed, the Valdai Upland, where the source (beginning of the river) is located, is called a very humid area. This is the land of swampy lakes.
There are unscientific but beautiful assumptions about why the Volga River was called the Volga. They are based on random consonance. For example, some researchers saw a similarity with the name of the oriole bird, others - with the word "wolf". Someone even tied here the Turkic people of the Bulgars, who lived near thisrivers in the 5th century. Like, the katoikonym "Bulgar" was transformed into "Volgar", and from it came the name of the water body, near which these tribes settled.
The discussed hydronym is also associated with the word "will". This explanation is clearly sewn with white thread, but nonetheless. They say that the runaway laborers, having crossed to the opposite bank of the river, shouted: "Freedom! Ga! Freedom! Ga!"
Someone sees a similarity with the name of Princess Olga the Great (V. Olga for short). In Russian mythology, there was also the hero Volga, who was able to plow this river with a plow.
Lena
Fans of false etymology tend to explain such onyms in their own way. But the name of the river is not connected with any Elena, even the Beautiful. Also, the word "laziness" should not be attributed here, they say, the water flows slowly, measuredly, and therefore it was christened like that.
So why was the river named "Lena"? In fact, this is a Russified version of the hydronym Elyu-Ene, which in translation from Evenki means "big river". This name was recorded in the 17th century by the Cossack Penda, the discoverer of the water artery. In the 18th century, the Tungus, who lived along the riverbed, called it Lenna, according to the historian F. I. Miller.
Moika River: why is it so named
If you don't dig deep, the origin of this hydronym can easily be linked to the public baths that were built there in the 18th century. The earliest documented name for this body of water is Mya. This word, in turn, comes from Izhora-Finnish"muya", meaning "dirt". Many swampy rivers in the vicinity of St. Petersburg have kept it in their names. And the water in the Moika was also muddy, muddy. Historians of the 18th century wrote about this, for example, A. I. Bogdanov. But over time, the difficult-to-pronounce word transformed into something more consonant with Russian vocabulary, here the similarity with the verbs "wash", "mine" worked.
Neva
Earlier on the site of St. Petersburg there were marshes and swamps. This fact is also reflected in the name of the main river of the city, which, most likely, comes from the Finnish word neva (swamp). In general, in the north-west of Russia, many hydronyms can be explained from the standpoint of the Finno-Ugric language. For example, Ladoga, Seliger and even the Moskva River.
Other linguists are supporters of the Indo-European version. They believe that the name comes from the root neṷa, meaning "new". The Neva is a relatively young river, formed by a breakthrough of waters from Lake Ladoga. Eyewitnesses of this event noted this fact by inventing her name. That is why the river was called the Neva River, that is, the new one.
Dnepr
In ancient Russian chronicles the name of the Dnieper River was written as Dnepr. It is known that the sound "b" arose in place of an even more ancient "y", and "ѣ" - where the sound combination "ay" was. If we substitute these equivalents into the first part of the Old Russian name "Dan", we get the word "Danube". What does "pr" mean? This element once meantfast movement. Its traces can be seen in the words "nimble", "strive", as well as in the names of other rivers (Prut, Pripyat). If you combine both parts, phrases with the meaning "Danube River" will come out. And according to The Tale of Bygone Years, it was from there that the first settlers came to the banks of the Dnieper. And they named the new river the name of the one they grew up on.
Euphrates
This is the largest river in Western Asia. The Euphrates (this name translates as "smooth flow") originates in the Armenian Highlands, in Transcaucasia, and flows into the Persian Gulf. Flowering valleys were a tasty morsel for the conquerors, in particular for Pharaoh Thutmose the Third. When the Egyptian troops arrived in this area, they were extremely surprised by the direction of the Euphrates. They compared it to the main artery of Egypt, the Nile, which flows from south to north and flows into the Mediterranean Sea. And it seemed to them that the water was moving in the opposite direction, that is, not in the way they used to observe. That is why the Euphrates was called the inverted river. This is exactly how she is mentioned in the annals of Thutmose the Third about this campaign.
Cities named after the river
There are many of them around the world. Barnaul stands on Barnaulka, Vologda - on the Volga. Often people did not fool their heads once again and named their village in the same way as the river on which it appeared. Here are examples of those cities whose name sounds exactly like a hydronym: Samara, Pumice, Kazan, Narva, Tuapse, Kostroma,Voronezh, Vyatka, Moscow.
Some have a short form of a possessive adjective on behalf of the river: Omsk (from Om), Tomsk (from Tom), Yeysk (from Yeya), Lensk (from Lena), Labinsk (from Laba), Angarsk (from Angara).
All hydronyms, as well as other toponyms, are truly an inexhaustible topic for research. Linguists have not yet come to a common denominator why the river was called the river, the lake - the lake, and the sea - the sea. So new versions have the right to appear.
