The City of Ravenna

From: Alexandru Moeller
Message: 67440
Date: 2011-04-30

I know there is no sure etymology about the name Ravenna in Italy and
that some opinions are that the name of the city is of etruscan origin,
some doubt about.
I compared some details and I was a bit wondering to see that the name
of Ravenna looks pretty appropiate to the Romanian Rovine(a place whose
location is stil disputed since the historians knows that is was
somewhere around the river Argesh but they don't know exactly where)
Now, the name Rovine is not only phoneticaly appropiate to Ravenna but
in its neighbourhood there is also the river which in antiquity was
called Rhabon.
Now, so far I remember the river Volga has too an ancient name and it
was Rav ( or maybe is stil is the name Rav in the morvin language) and
it is supposed to be cognate with scythian Rha which should be cognate
with mithycal Sanskrit and Avestan rivers Rañha and Rasah..

It can be there is a very big coincidence and the names are not related
to each other but it can be there is a relation between these. The fact
that there is an "-ine" in Romanian "Rovine" speaks for an double "nn"
in the ancient times. *Rabenne/Rabenna could have been the form which
yelded the Romanian "Rovine" ( *Ravenne>*Rãvîne>*Rovîne>Rovine). The
vicinity of the ancient river Rhabon , the Italian Ravenna, the Rav
river.. do we have here with some Indoeuropean denomination or it is
maybe more older due its big geographical dispersal?



Alex