Category: History - European
The first wave of Asian immigration that swept over Europe gave names to the great features of nature, such as the rivers, long before the wandering tribes that composed it settled down into fixed habitations, and gave names to their dwellings and their lands. The names thus g...
The first wave of Asian immigration that swept over Europe gave names to the great features of nature, such as the rivers, long before the wandering tribes that composed it sett...
2. CHAPTER II.We find that while there are many names of rivers which contain nothing more than the simple root from which they are derived, as the Cam, the Rhine, the Elbe, the Don, &c., the...
3. CHAPTER III.The names of rivers may be divided into two classes, appellative and descriptive--or in other words, into those which describe a river simply as "the water" or "the river," and...
4. CHAPTER IV.The great river of India, which has given its name to that country, is derived from Sansc. _sindu_, Persian _hindu_, water or sea. It was known to the ancients under its present...
5. chapter 3, may be from the same origin; this form corresponds mostnearly with the Scandinavian. There are one or two, as the Caldew in Cumberland, which seem to show the Germ. form _au_ or _ow_. The ending _ick_ or _ock_ in several Scotch rive...
6. CHAPTER V.In the preceding chapter I have included the words from which I have not been able to extract any other sense than that of water. As I have before mentioned, it is probable that...
7. CHAPTER VI.In the inscription of Pul found at Nineveh, as deciphered in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society, vol. 19, pt. 2, the Euphrates is called the Irat, which is conjectured by th...
8. CHAPTER VII.There are a number of river-names in which the sense of clearness, brightness, or transparency is to be traced. From the Sansc. _cand_, to shine, Lat. _candeo_, Welsh, Ir. Arm.,...
9. CHAPTER VIII.The GRETA in the English Lake District has been generally derived from Old Norse _grâta_, Scotch _greet_, to weep or mourn, in allusion to the wailing sound made by its waters....
10. CHAPTER IX.There are several river-names which contain the idea, either of the junction of two streams, or of the separation of a river into two branches. The Vistula, Visula, or Wysla, (f...
11. CHAPTER X.The idea of a river as a protection or as a boundary seems to indicate a more settled state of society, and therefore not to belong to the earliest order of nomenclature. And co...
12. CHAPTER XI.But even if this derivation is to be received, we must seek another meaning for the KOLA in Russian Lapland, and the KOLI(MA) in Siberia--the latter in particular being a large...
13. CHAPTER XII.When we review the long list of words that must have once had the meaning of water or river, we can hardly fail to be struck with the number that have succumbed in what he so ap...