Ponds have always been important for human life. Any settlement depended directly on the source of water. Therefore, the compulsory vocabulary of all languages has one or more words to indicate the flow of water flowing along a constant channel. In Russian, this is the noun "river". Now the semantics of this word have been lost, one can only guess what meaning those who invented it put into it. But why was the river called the 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? All of 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 the Pre-Slavic, proves the presence of many words with a 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, rika in Ukrainian. Since it is present in the Slavic languages of the eastern, western, and southern groups, it becomes clear that all these words had a single ancestor. Also in Russian there are words that no longer stand out as cognate in modern morphology, but it turns out that they were such earlier. We are talking about the swarm, rush, and fly tokens. They all have one thing in common - something related to movement.
There are at least two versions from where it came to us. 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 (stream of water). Latin rivus means "stream", and this also speaks in defense of this theory. Well, from it came the river (river) in modern English.
The second version says that the morpheme is rek of Indo-European origin. It is associated with the ancient root renos with the meaning "current". Proponents of this theory cite as an example the name of the Rhine River, which, in their opinion, means "current." Similar semantics in ancient Indian rayas . You can also pay attention to riyate (move, start flowing). And over time, the word went through a phonetic transformation for a more convenient pronunciation. That is why the river was called the river.
There is also the ancient Indian word rekha (row, strip, scratch). It is more like the discussed noun in Russian, but it does not really converge in semantics.
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, covered in darkness. But about some of them you can still learn at least something.
Volga
Why was she called that? There is a fairly simple and logical explanation. Some linguists are sure that the Volga hydronym comes from the word "moisture". The fact is that when people settled near a reservoir, it was for them the 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 hydronyms in translation from ancient languages simply mean "river", "water", "moisture".
In the Old Russian language there was full consonance, that is, the development of secondary vowels: the gate - the gate, the city - the city. So the river was first called Vlag, and then this proper name was transformed into the Vologda, but over time it was reduced to a shorter form “Volga”.
There is another version according to which the name of this river has Baltic roots. This language group has the word valka , meaning "stream flowing through a swamp."
Indeed, the
Valdai Upland, where the source (the 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 harmony. For example, some researchers saw similarities with the name of the Oriole bird, while others with the word "wolf". Someone even tied here the Turkic people of the Bulgars, who lived near this river in the 5th century. Like, the Katoykonim "Bulgars" was transformed into a "Volgar", and from it came the name of the water body, near which these tribes settled.
The hydronym under discussion is also associated with the word "will." The explanation is clearly sewn with white thread, but nonetheless. They say that fugitive farm laborers, having crossed over to the opposite bank of the river, shouted: "Will! Ha! Will! Ha!"
Someone sees a resemblance to the name of Princess Olga the Great (abbreviated as V. Olga). There was a hero Volga in Russian mythology, 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, one should not ascribe here the word "laziness", they say, water flows slowly, measuredly, and therefore it has been christened so.
So why was the river called "Lena"? In fact, this is a Russified version of the hydronym Elyu-Ene, which in Evenki means "big river". This name was recorded in the 17th century by the discoverer of the aquatic artery Cossack Penda. In the 18th century, the Tungus, living along the channel, called it Lenna according to the data of the historian F.I. Miller.
Moika River: why it is so named
If you do not dig deep, then the origin of this hydronym can easily be associated with public baths, which were built there in the 18th century. The earliest documented name for this reservoir 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 its name. 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 hard-to-pronounce word was transformed into something more consonant with Russian vocabulary, the similarity to the verbs “wash,” “mine,” worked here.
Neva
There used to be swamps and swamps on the site of St. Petersburg. This fact is embodied 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 Moscow River.
Other linguists are supporters of the Indo-European version. They believe that this name comes from the root neṷa , meaning "new." Neva - the river is relatively young, formed by the breakthrough of waters from Lake Ladoga. Eyewitnesses of this event noted this fact, having come up with her name. That is why the river was called the Neva River, that is, a new one.
Dnieper
In ancient Russian chronicles, the name of the Dnieper River was written as Danѣpr. It is known that the sound "b" appeared on the site of an even more ancient "y", and "ѣ" - where there was a sound combination "ay". If you substitute these equivalents in the first part of the old Russian name "Dan", you get the word "Danube". What does pr mean? This element once signified rapid movement. Its traces can be seen in the words "quick", "strive", as well as in the names of other rivers (Prut, Pripyat). If you connect both parts, you will get phrases with the meaning "Danube River". 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 gave the new river the name of the one on which they grew up.
Euphrates
It is the largest river in West Asia. The Euphrates (the name translates as "smooth flow") originates in the Armenian Highlands, in Transcaucasia, and flows into the Persian Gulf. Blooming valleys were a tidbit for the conquerors, in particular for the pharaoh Thutmose III. 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 an inverted river. That is how it is mentioned in the annals of Thutmose the Third about this campaign.
Cities named after the river
All over the world there are many. Barnaul stands on Barnaulka, Vologda - on the Volga. Often people did not fool their heads once more 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 the same with the hydronym: Samara, Pumice, Kazan, Narva, Tuapse, Kostroma, Voronezh, Vyatka, Moscow.
Some have a short form of possessive adjective on behalf of the river: Omsk (from Omi), Tomsk (from Tom), Yeysk (from Ei), Lensk (from Lena), Labinsk (from Laba), Angarsk (from Angara).
All hydronyms, as well as other toponyms, are a truly inexhaustible topic for research. Linguists still have not come to a common denominator, why the river was called the river, the lake - the lake, and the sea - the sea. So new versions are quite entitled to appear.