Names of major rivers are
often etymologically equivalent to "the River", "the Water", "the Stream",
etc. Simple epithets like "Mighty", "Running", "Winding", "White" or
"Black" are also popular. This monotony is precisely the reason why
patterns like "Old European hydronymy" are so homogeneous despite their wide
geographical range. Microhydronymy is a different thing. Even the locals need to
distinguish a number of brooks and rivulets. I know of a few interesting cases
when an incredibly old name for a mere brook survives locally despite being
unknown to official cartography. Near the place where I lived as a child there
is a rather inconsopicuous stream known as the Mrówka to everybody who is
familiar with it (the name means 'ant' in Polish). On all maps that are
sufficiently detailed to show it, the name is Zimna Woda 'Cold Water', unknown
locally. It was only when I became interested in etymology that I discovered
that Mrówka was a folk-etymological distortion of Nrówka (initial <nr->
does not occur in any modern Polish morpheme): it flows into a larger river once
called the Nrowa (now Utrata, of purely Polish origin) < *norwa, an ancient
name without a Slavic etymology (but with Baltic connections).
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 8:13 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Pliny's "Guthalus"
The locals don't really need a name for their river; it is
very much
just 'the river'. (For example, I don't think I have ever
_heard_
the name of the river that runs through the town I live in!)
However
traders, and any others who use various waterways, would need a
name,
and may therefore be the effective namers. One may even need a
name
to discuss fords. Trading goes back a very long way - Mesolithic
at
least! What relatively static locals call the river is largely
irrelevant.
The one exception to the pronciple of naming that I can
think of is
an overwhelmingly dominant river. For that, a phrase such
as 'the
main river' might suffice. After all, in English we don't
really
have a single name for our planet! (Is it Earth? Is it
Terra?)