Why the river was called a river? Why was the Volga named the Volga?

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 several words to denote the flow of water flowing along a permanent channel. In Russian it is the noun "river". Now the semantics of this word is lost, one can only guess what significance was put by those who invented it. But why the river was called a river? And what lies in the names of such waterways, as the Volga, Lena, the Dnieper, the Neva? What washed in the Sink, who turned the Euphrates? All this is told below.

The etymology of the word "river"

This lexical unit appeared in the Russian language in the 11th century. The fact that it existed in the Proto-Slavonic language proves the existence of a multitude of words with similar sound and meaning in other linguistic systems. For example, ryueka in Serbo-Croatian, rzeka in Polish, rieka in Slovak, reka in Czech and Slovenian, rica 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 progenitor. Also in Russian there are words that no longer stand out as crocheted in modern morphology, but it turns out that they were such before. It's about lexemes "swarm," "rush," "reyat." All of them have one common sema - something related to the movement.

There are at least two versions, from where it came to us. According to the first theory, the Slavic root "rivers-" was formed as a result of the alternation of vowels from the ancient Irish rian with the meaning "river, road". In Old English there is a word rid (stream), in Middle German - rin (water current). Latin rivus means "stream", and this, too, speaks in defense of this theory. Well and from it there was a river (river) in modern English.

The second version says that the morpheme rek is of Indo-European origin. It is associated with the ancient root of renos with the meaning "flow". Supporters of this theory give an example of the name of the River Rhine, which, in their opinion, means "current". Similar semantics of the ancient Indian rayas . You can also pay attention to riyate (move, start leaking). And over time, the word passed the phonetic transformation for a more comfortable pronunciation. That's why the river was called a river.

There is also the ancient Indian word rekha (row, strip, scratch). It is more like the noun in Russian, but the semantics do not really converge.

Almost all the 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 find out something.

Volga

Why did they call her that? There is a fairly simple and logical explanation. Some linguists are convinced that the hydronome of the Volga comes from the word "moisture". The fact is that when people settled near a pond, it was for them the only source of moisture. Usually they did not know about the existence of some other water bodies because they did not have the opportunity to travel. Not surprisingly, most hydronyms in translation from ancient languages mean simply "river", "water", "moisture".

In the Old Russian language there was full-blownness, that is, the development of secondary vowels: the gate - the gate, the city - the city. So the river was first named Moisture, and then this name was transformed into Vologu, but eventually it was reduced to a shorter form of "Volga".

There is another version according to which the name of this river has Baltic roots. In this language group there is the word valka , meaning "stream flowing through the swamp".
Indeed, the Valdai Upland, where the source (the beginning of the river) is located, is called a very humid terrain. This is the edge 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 similarity with the name of the bird of the Orioles, 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 katakonim "Bulgars" was transformed into "Volgas", and from it the name of the water object occurred, near which these tribes settled.

Also connect the discussed hydronym with the word "will." The explanation is clearly sewn with white threads, but nonetheless. They say that runaway farm laborers, having moved 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 also in the Russian mythology the hero Volga, who plowed the river with a plow.

Lena

Fans of false etymology are inclined to explain such onyam in their own way. But with no Elena, even the Beautiful, the name of the river is not connected. Also, do not ascribe the word "laziness" here, they say, the water flows slowly, measuredly, and that's why they called it so.

So why the river was named "Lena"? In fact, this is a Russified version of the hydromass of Elyu-Ene, which in the translation from Evenk means "big river". This name in the 17th century was fixed by the discoverer of the waterway Cossack Penda. In the 18th century, the Tungus, who lived along the riverbed, called it Lena according to the historian FI Miller.

River Moika: why so named

If you do not dig deeply, then 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 of this reservoir is Mia. This word, in turn, comes from the Izhora-Finnish "muya", meaning "mud." Many marshy rivers in the vicinity of St. Petersburg preserved it in its name. And the water in the Moika was also muddy, tainted. This was written about by historians of the 18th century, for example AI Bogdanov. But over time, the difficult-to-pronounce word was transformed into something more consonant with Russian vocabulary, a similarity to the verbs "wash" and "mine."

Neva

Earlier on the site of St. Petersburg were swamps and swamps. This fact is also imprinted 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". The Neva- river is a relatively young river, formed by the breakthrough of waters from the Ladoga Lake. Eyewitnesses of this event noted this fact, having thought up her name. That's why the river was called the river Neva, that is new.

Dnieper

In the ancient Russian chronicles the name of the Dnieper River was written as Dnepr. It is known that the sound "ь" arose on the site of an even more ancient "y", and "ѣ" - where there was a sound "ai". If you substitute these equivalents in the first part of the ancient Russian name "Dany", you will get the word "Danube". And what does "pr" mean? This element meant once a rapid movement. His tracks can be seen in the words "quick", "strive," and also in the names of other rivers (Prut, Pripyat). If you join both parts, the word "Danube-river" will appear. 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 Western Asia. Euphrates (the name translates as "smooth flow") originates in the Armenian Highlands, in the Transcaucasus, and flows into the Persian Gulf. The 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 the south to the north and flows into the Mediterranean. And it seemed to them that the water was moving in the opposite direction, that is, not as they used to observe. That's why the Euphrates was called an inverted river. This is how it is mentioned in the annals of Thutmose the Third about this campaign.

Cities named after the river

There are a lot of such people all over the world. Barnaul stands on Barnaulka, Vologda on the Volga. Often people did not fool the head again and called their village the same way as the river on which it appeared. Here are examples of cities whose name sounds exactly the same as the hydronym: Samara, Pumza, 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 Tomi), Yeisk (from Ei), Lensk (from Lena), Labinsk (from Laba), Angarsk (from Angara).

All hydronyms, as well as other toponyms, are truly inexhaustible subject for research. Linguists still have not come to a common denominator, why the river was called a river, the lake is a lake, and the sea is a sea. So the new versions are quite right to appear.