A hydronym (from Greek hudor, "water" and onuma, "name") is a proper name of a body of water. Hydronymy is the study of hydronyms and of how bodies of water receive their names and how they are transmitted through history.

As linguistic items, hydronyms are very conservative, with successor peoples often retaining the name given a body of water (eg: Mississippi has passed from Native Americans to contemporary Americans). It can apply to rivers, lakes, even oceanic elements. This article does not cite its references or sources. ... An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ...

Among the Indo-European languages, hydronyms from various languages can all share a common etymon. The Danube, Don, Dniester, Dnieper and Donets rivers all contain Proto-Indo-European (*danu-), (IEW 175), meaning "river". Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... The Danube bend at Visegrád is a popular destination of tourists The Danube (ancient Danuvius) is Europes second-longest river (after the Volga). ... The Don (Дон) is one of the major rivers of Russia. ... The Dniester (Polish Dniestr, Ukrainian Дністер (Dnister), Romanian Nistru, Russian Днестр (Dnestr), Yiddish‫נעסטער ‬ (nester), Serbian (Dnjester) and during antiquity was called Tyras in Latin) is a river in Eastern Europe. ... This article is about the river. ... Donets (Донец), is a tributary of Don River, Russia. ... The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, believed to have been spoken around 4000 BC in Central Asia (according to the Kurgan hypothesis) or millennia before that in Anatolia (according to the Anatolian hypothesis). ... The Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (The Indo-European Etymological Dictionary) by the Czech scholar and Irish nationalist Julius Pokorny, was published in 1959. ...

See also

• Old European hydronymy
• Rigvedic rivers
• List of river name etymologies

Old European (alteuropäisch) is the term used by Krahe (1964) for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of Indo-European hydronymy in Central and Western Europe. ... Rivers play a prominent part in the hymns of the Rigveda, and consequently in early Vedic religion. ... // Asia Chang Jiang (Yangtze): Chinese long river Dongjiang: Chinese east river Huang He: Chinese yellow river Sefid-rud: Persian: White river Aravand-rud: Persian: Fast river. Europe Avon: Brythonic meaning river Cam: Brythonic meaning crooked Clwyd: Welsh meaning hurdle Danube: Latin Danuvius, from Iranian (Scythian or Sarmatian) dānu- river...

Source

Robert S.P. Beekes, "River", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, pp. 486-87. The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture or EIEC, edited by James P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams, was published in 1997 by Fitzroy Dearborn. ...

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