Theres only one Thames but there's a Thame (a tributary of the Thames, in Oxfordshire), a Tame in the West Midlands, another Tame in Greater Manchester (a tributary of the Mersey), another Tame in Yorkshire (tributary of the Tees) a Team in Tyneside and a Tamar in Devon/Cornwall. Their names all come from the same Brittonic root (tam-, likely meaning dark or muddy).
That's extremely interesting. Just yesterday I was having a trawl though my Finnish language book, compiling a list of suspected links in vocabulary between Finnish and Czech, despite one being a Fenno-Ugrian and the other an Indo-European language. One of those words was 'tumma' in Finnish and 'tmavý' in Czech, both meaning 'dark'. It's only now that the English word 'dim' has leapt out as a word possibly related to that 'tam-' root and also to 'tumma' and 'tmavý'. 'Dim' also brings to mind the Finnish 'tomu' ('dust') and Czech 'dým' ('smoke') - both things that have a darkening effect.
@@hadz8671 It's only now, on looking at a map with the River Teme thereon, that it's struck me that the 'Ten' in Tenbury Wells, which lies on the river, may be a corruption of Teme. I initially thought that the River Teme may, therefore, be more closely related to a river none too far away from me, the River Tean, which joins the River Dove near Uttoxeter. However, of course, Teme is going to pre-date Tenbury Wells by quite some degree, so maybe it is in that 'Tam-'/'Tham-'/'Team' group of rivers after all. As I am always on the look-out for rivers abroad that relate to ours I should well imagine that the Timiş, which becomes the Tamiš when it leaves Romania for Serbia, joining the Danube just downstream of Belgrade, is part of this picture. Timişoara (Temesvár in Hungarian and Temeschburg in German) is clearly named after that river, that to Hungarian speakers is the Temes...which is just one letter away from the River Teme!
@@christopherbentley7289To my knowledge, Proto-Finnic has been influenced by Proto-Baltic and Proto-Germanic. Uralic and IE languages in general have interacted for millenia
There's also a Don in Russia, two Sèvres in France, two Stours in the East of England and at least two rivers simply called Rio Grande ("big river") in the Americas. On top of that, the Thames randomly changes its name for a stretch as it's known as the Isis when it flows through Oxford.
As far as the Rio Grande(s) go, it's because the actual colonial Spanish name is long, and most folx living nearby shortened it to just "Rio Grande." This is especially common in modern Texas--almost all the river names go by shorter versions of the colonial names (eg, the Brazos is shortened down from "Rio Los Brazos de Dios," Red River is a short translation of "Rio Rojo del Sur"). I think that's how a lot of waterways wind up with similar names--they started out as "River X," but then folx dropped of the qualifier over time, or forgot, or changed language, etc. The part that gets remembered is the shorthand the locals use, not necessarily the "formal" name.
@@Strider_Bvlbaha I didn't know that about the Brazos (it brings to mind the full original name for the city of L.A. though) so that's interesting. Isn't the Southern Red River so called to distinguish it from the rivière Rouge up in Canada though? Or are there more than two Red Rivers? It honestly wouldn't surprise me! 😆
@@FoggyD There are...a lot of Red Rivers. Pretty sure that there's also one in Argentina. But there is a "Red River of the North" somewhere waaaay up north. Might be the one in Canada, might be somewhere else. Possible there is one in Canada and one in the US--colonial names are confusing as heck. Speaking of confusing Canadian rivers, there are North Canadian AND South Canadian Rivers in Oklahoma (for added confusion, they join and flow into the Arkansas River not too far from where the Illinois River flows into the Arkansas--all while still in Oklahoma!)
@@Strider_Bvlbaha Cool (if confusing) facts! Can't find evidence of an Argentine Red River, but there seems to be one in the Dominican Republic so there are definitely a lot of them around.
@@Strider_Bvlbaha Yah, the US and Canada share a Red River of the North, which runs on the Minnesota-North Dakota border in the US, and continues into Manitoba Canada to empty into Lake Winnipeg. (The lake itself drains to Hudson Bay in the Arctic via a different river.) And yah, a bunch of Spanish-speaking countries have a Rio Rojo ("red river") or a Rio Colorado ("red/colored river"). Likely many of these are named for mud and silt tinting their water a reddish color at some point on their course.
In Welsh, a single letter F Is pronounced the same as a V in English- so the Welsh "Afon" for river is closer to the English Avon than you said it in the video, but with a short A Rather than a long one. Though that would be hard to get across in the video without going off on a massive tangent about Welsh orthography!
The Avon river just outside of Perth is pronounced locally as the Av-on (av like in the word 'have', on like well, the word 'on'). Would that be closer to the Welsh 'Afon'?
0:42 You forget the 3 River Avons in Scotland too lol. To add my bit, my idea for how to fix this similar names problem is to just maybe keep the names for sentimental reasons, but just add an additional suffix to the names, such as "The River Avon of Bristol" or "River Avon of Strathspay".
There's also a River Ouse in Norfolk. What confuses me is why when speaking about rivers we prefix the name with "River" rather than suffix it. It's the "Thames Estuary" but the "River Thames" not the "Thames River."
I feel like that's mostly a British/European thing. Here in the US pretty much all rivers are [Name] River like the Mississippi River, Colorado River, Colombia River, etc. The only major river that's an exception to this is the Rio Grande which comes from Spanish. (Even though that name has never been used in Spanish and Spanish speakers outside the US call it Río Bravo) Edit: just now realizing that you probably meant "we" as in Brits rather than "we" as in all English speakers but it's still an interesting difference in the way the US and UK name things
@@mintcervida6372 Yet in US English you have Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Mead, Lake Huron etc.... And then in the same breath, Toluca Lake,, Yellowstone Lake, Table Rock Lake, Kentucky Lake.
@@davidkgame They do that in Scotland and Ireland to. Loch Ness, Loch Neagh. In England, anything goes. Tarns, Meres, Waters, Lake. edited because I'm a spelling biff.
I'd guess a runover of old word-order. By saying the River Thames, you're describing Thames as a river. Thames Estuary is the Estuary described by Thames, so-to-speak, hence it would longer be the River Thames Estuary, or the Estuary of Thames the River, like descriptor-noun-subdescriptor (if that makes sense). Imagine, for a second, that there's a city also named Thames. To differentiate, you'd likely say the city of Thames, as you say the city of London, it's like that. City Thames and River Thames Heck, could also be that River Thames sets up that it's a river and then tells you its name afterwards, hence Thames Estuary sets up that it's related to Thames and is described as its Estuary. Go back to River Thames Estuary and you have that it is a river named thames, but specifically its Estuary. I could also just be mad and overthinking a germanic language that has existed long enough to be butchered by the adoption and absorption of countless other languages both romantic and germanic.
There was a Thames River in New Zealand that did get renamed to a Maori name (Waihou). My internet sources give a date of 1947 for the name change. The region of its catchment area is still sometimes referred to as "Thames Valley" - quite often by people who are unaware of the reason why
This can be very confusing - last winter I remember hearing flood warnings for "the Avon in Wiltshire" and then having to try and figure out WHICH River Avon in Wiltshire they were talking about....
It's odd that the Clyde in Scotland is commfonly known by it's English name, but its namesake in New Zealand is known by it's Scottish name - the Clutha.
Thanks - I've never realised Clutha and Clyde were effectively the same name, especially given there is a town called Clyde on the banks of the Clutha River.
@@jbw416 Well, Edinburgh was never a Gaelic settlement, it was settled by the Anglo-Saxons and was part of the Kingdom of Northumberland. So it makes sense that in English it's referred to by an Anglicised version as that's it's original name.
There are a couple of River Wey. I grew up in Weymouth, the mouth of the River Wey, in Dorset. There is also a River Wey , a main tributary of the River Thames in south east England. Its two branches, one of which rises near Alton in Hampshire and the other in West Sussex to the south of Haslemere,[n 1] join at Tilford in Surrey. Once combined the flow is eastwards then northwards via Godalming and Guildford to meet the Thames at Weybridge.
Given that Wey is pronounced the same way as 'weigh' I have long wondered if there is a relationship with the Váh in Slovakia, that I know personally from having been beside its banks in Žilina on a particularly chilly day in January 2017, when it had been down as low as - 21°C, with some of its edges frozen over. 'Váhy' is Slovak for 'scales' and, furthermore, the German-language variant of Váh, Waag, is clearly linked to the German for 'scales', 'Waage'.
There's also a 24 mile River Avon (aka Avon Water) in Lanarkshire which is a tributary of the Clyde. The town of Strathaven (pron. "Straven") takes it's name from the river.
In the old county of Sussex there are two different rivers named Rother. Their names have distinct origins. One is named after a bridge, the Rotherbridge, which is from an old Anglo-Saxon place name meaning "cattle bridge." The other is named after a village, Rotherfield, that is near its source. Rotherfield derives from an Old English name meaning 'open land of the cattle.' So both rivers get their name from 'cattle..' Interestingly, there's another Rother in England, in South Yorkshire, but its name derives from Celtic, and meant either 'Great Water' or 'Red Water.'
There are two Rivers Calder which have sources almost next to one another near the Lancs/W Yorks border. One flows west to join the River Ribble and the other flows east to join the River Aire.
Then there's Esk - two in England, two in Scotland (along with two South Esks and two Norht Esks). Not surprising really since the name derives from an early Celtic word for water ... as do rivers Usk, Axe and Exe (and whisky).
We live alongside the Hampshire River Avon. The stream here that flows into it is the Lin Brook, which comes from the Celtic word for water or stream so the Brook Brook flows into the River River.
This also adds to the issue where some English cities have to use "add-ons" to describe which one you are talking about, and these usually are geographic. Stafford-upon-Avon, Newastle-upon-Tyne, and Minster-on-Sea, to name a few. I don't know if this is an issue in other countries, even in Europe. In America, we obviously have a lot of towns with the same name, (for example, there's an Orange Beach, CA and an Orange Beach, AL) but never two within the same state, so the state becomes the denominator. Suppose it could arise from the same problem of places being named by people who had no idea that there was another town of the same name on the other side of the island, especially when you take into account the fact that there were as many as seven different kingdoms within modern-day England simultaneously in the wake of the Anglo-Saxon migrations.
Yah, the US Post Office Department (today's US Postal Service) especially required post office names to be unique within a state, so mail could be sorted and routed correctly. (Especially since zip codes didn't exist until the 1960s.) And since having a town name different from the post office name would be confusing in itself... As a sidebar: Unique town names could be a problem in newly-settled territories because of this. Where many new communities were being founded, the existing maps and directories went out of date pretty quickly. And with no computers or internet yet, you couldn't google a name to see if it was taken. So many a town's founders would submit a proposed town name ... only to have to go with a second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc...) choice instead. Quite a few oddball names came from this legal need to be unique -- "You can call it Hell [Michigan] for all I care", "Nowthen, what should we name our new [Minnesota] town", "I guess we're still Nameless [Georgia, Tennessee, Texas] for now", etc.
There is also a Don River in Toronto I believe. Ontario has a lot of British names in the southwest due to a governor general we once had who wanted the place to be a little England, He named a city London and the river it was on the Thames River. He wanted this to be the new capital of the province but he later admitted that Toronto was better.
For about 20 years,Bristol was in a county called Avon! Avon still applies to a variety of things, 25 years after the county disappeared!!! Great video.
The same things happens in Portuguese/Portugal. Not only river names repeat over and over, they also come in "families". You not only have several rivers called "Cabril", you also have several rivers called "Cabrum" and "Cabrão" - and often they are close to each other, or one is a tributary to another similarly-named river. The same with "Paiva", "Paivó" and "Paivô".
Great video! The fact that the river names were often the oldest named is something I've never considered, but it makes sense. Moscow, for example, is named after River Moskva, and no one really knows what Moskva means - some ancient name, I suppose!
I think it's interesting that the Arabic word "Jazira" has a similar meaning, of an island, peninsula, or an area surrounded by rivers (e.g. upper Mesopotamia is called al-Jazira), despite being derived from a completely different language family (Indo-European vs Semitic). "Jazira" is likely to have developed from a loanword which meant "wooden bridge" in the ancient Sumerian language, which is neither Indo-European nor Semitic. Perhaps it's a term that has somehow remained somewhat conserved over thousands of years of language evolution and divergence, or was passed between cultures relatively recently despite being a very old word, or maybe it's just a coincidence?
As I heard it, indeed the locals didn't travel much so just used the name river or similar, but may have had a name for the river. This wasn't a problem till 1066 when William I had the Doomsday Book created auditing the whole of his newly conquered land! Of course he spoke French like his country men conducting the survey , so when they spoke to the locals pointing to the river and asking "what is that" probably expecting the name of the river they more often than not were given the word for river in the local language (either old Briton or Celtic or Norse). Which was duly noted down for the survey and became the official name for said river!
There are at least to rivers called the Frome (pronounced Froom), one a tributary of the Bristol Avon and one running through the town of Frome in Somerset. The word is believed to mean "fast flowing".
As someone who used to live in the village of hill hill, located near the hill hill hill and is on the banks of the river river... how dare you claim our naming of things is bad...
Well, the Avons in Australia are usually a side-river to something, so one could call them Avon-to-Swan or Avon-to-Cloucester. And for the river of Stratford-upon-Avon, you could change the river's name to Avon-long-Stratford... but you'd have to change the town's name, too, I guess 😂 Sorry, I'm feeling rather silly today.
@@pauljackson3491 Officially the town's name is Stratford-upon-Avon but in all but official circumstances just gets called Stratford; whenever places are called "Place-upon-River" that's always the official name, but almost always gets called just "Place". Only exception is when there's multiple cities/towns with the same name, for example Newcastle-under-Lyme is normally called by its full name as "Newcastle" on its own almost always means Newcastle upon Tyne which is by far the bigger and more distinct city (Newcastle under Lyme being part of the urban area of Stoke).
Well spotted that we have a river “Lagan” in Sweden as well! In fact, it is located in a part of Sweden that used to belong to Denmark, and the Danish vikings sailed westwards, so a connection isn’t completely out of the question.
As I wrote in another comment: 'Swedish "Lagan" comes from older Swedish "lagher", which is related to Old Icelandic "lǫgr", Latin "lacus" etc...and then you have "loch" over in Scotland. And they all mean "river" or "water".'
(Perhaps not so) fun fact: The name of the Polish river you mentioned is Drwęca, not Drewenz - that one is what it went by among Prussians when it served as a border river between the territories controlled by Prussia and Russia in XIXth century. While not wrong per se (I suppose it's still called that in German), it's a bit surprising to see its name in a foreign language nowadays ;). To be fair though, there had been several versions of this name throughout times, some more germanic other more slavic, depending on whom you asked and who had the rights to draw maps at the time. There are also at least 3 theories for its etymology, none of which seem to be related to oak trees or clear water of the British 'Derwent' family (we have those as well but they sound different), but rather to the boring 'water', a bit more poetic 'the course of a river' or finally a bit more exciting: an early Slavic version of the verb 'tear' ('dreć') as the river had a fairly aggressive temper and "tore" at its shores. Which some scholars also believe to be the source of the names for Odra, Drawa and maybe the Czech Odrava too.
Perhaps that similarity between Drewenz and Derwent - certainly taking into account that 'z' sound-shifts to 't' from German to English - threw me out, therefore. I do remain rather more confident, however, that the Czech Dřevnice is related to Derwent. Thanks for drawing my attention to that Czech river Odrava as I'd not been aware of that.
@@christopherbentley7289 I know nothing about Czech but I'm happy to believe you on Dřevnice case. Dřevo means wood and seems to have come from the proto-indo-european dóru, which is also the source for the proto-Celtic word for oak, right?... I haven't seen anything in support of the Czech word pointing to oak trees in particular, but then again my "research" was 5 minutes on Google, and being Polish I'm tempted to believe the false friends between our languages way too often to trust my instincts ;)
@@yuaelt I don't think that Dřevnice would be anything to do specifically with oak trees as the Czech for oak is dub, so if there were a river in the Czech Republic specifically oak-related it would be called something like 'Dubnice', which does not exist anywhere, although there are settlements of that name. Is there a river in Poland whose name is based on dąb? That idea of 'false friends' between Czech and Polish and the Czech for oak brings to mind that strange relationship in names of months. The Czech for April is duben - the month of oaks - which in Polish, of course, is Kwiecień - the month of flowers (?) - whereas the Czech for May is květen - the month of flowers - which in Polish is Maj.
@@yuaelt Subsequent to that, since I am familiar with bits of Finnish, it came back to me that Finnish has a 'month of oaks' - Tammikuu - but that's January.
@@christopherbentley7289 You're right, but I was wondering if the older proto-indo-european word could have originally meant oak and then the use widened to more generic wood, or was it originally wood, and then only on the western side started being associated with oaks. The latter seems more logical but that might be naiive on my part. I'm not aware of any Polish rivers named after "dąb" but just like in Czechia, there are villages and cities named after it. And the months thing... that's always interesting when they're not numbers, right? :) One of the theories for the Polish name of January is that it's from the practice of making wooden sticks around that time which would later be uses as support for plants. I suppose between "the month when the ground freezes" and "the cold and harsh month" our people wanted some variety :D. I wonder if the Finnish name could have similar connections (like, maybe January was a good month for doing something with the oak wood?)
Gladly I'm pretty sure most Portuguese rivers have unique names. Only exceptions I could find were Cabril, Mau, Pequeno, Torto. These last three mean Bad, Small and Crooked. No idea why Cabril is popular, though
Correct. I grew up on the banks of the Red River (of the North) that flows into Lake Winnipeg. The other Red River is a major tributary of the Lower Mississippi.
Doing a lab report for uni on the plastics found in our local river just to find there’s four other bloody River Stours. It means fast-flowing or turbid so it makes sense but only care about my one lol
There are at least two rivers called the Dee in Scotland as well as the Cheshire one. I live on the bank of the river Ayr ( in Ayrshire) and I think its name root is the same as the Aire in Yorkshire. A tributary of the R Ayr is the Lugar which might be a unique river name in the UK. Ayrshire also has a River Doon ( one of the fastest flowing in Scotland as it drops 700 feet in thirty odd miles ) I don't know if that name is Don related.
I have the „Der Brockhaus Atlas“ from 1937 - a fascinating insight into how a citizen of Third Reich Germany would have seen the world - which has a map in the historical section of the Roman Empire with the names of the rivers in original Latin. The Loire is down as the 'Liger', so you never know, that River Lugar may be unique in this country, but it has relatives abroad. Incidentally, mentioning the Loire brings to mind the peculiarity that there is a smaller Loir nearby, so when one thinks that there's a mistake in my 'Times Concise Atlas of the World' where there are «départements» called Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire and Indre-et-Loire, but ones called Loir-et-Cher and Eure-et-Loir, the last two are named after that smaller river without the '-e' on the end! That 'other' river joins at the left bank of the Maine shortly upstream of Angers, the Maine very soon thereafter joining at the right bank of its larger near-namesake.
There's also a Dee on the Yorkshire/Cumbria border that flows into the Lune. It gives its name to Dentdale. From what I know about the Don in Yorkshire near where I live it came from the pre-celtic river goddess Danu so you maybe get your Don in Scotland, Russia and in the Danube. An old local rhyme points to human sacrifice "The shelving slimy River Don, Each year a daughter or a son"
@@antonycharnock2993 I have long wondered if the river that's the Dyje in the Czech Republic and the Thaya in Austria is in any way related to our various Rivers Dee. I suppose Thaya would also possibly feed back to our Tay. I'm glad you referred to the Danube as I've known that personally at various places, four where it is the Donau and one where it is the Dunaj, those places being its source in Donaueschingen, Ulm, Regensburg, Passau - the „Dreiflüßestadt“ ('Three-River City'), where the Danube, Inn and Ilz join together - and Bratislava/Petržalka (on four occasions!). Later on in the day I was at Donaueschingen I leapt over the watershed to the upper Rhine in Konstanz as it leaves Lake Constance. As Lancaster is so named because of being the Roman settlement on the River Lune, it is a distinct possibility that the Lahn in Germany is a cognate river thereof. It strikes me as something of an irony, thinking of a certain WWII aircraft named after Lancaster, that the virtual next-door river source to that of the Lahn is none other than that of the Eder! I've had a boat trip on the Edersee, BTW and it was an unforgettable evocation of the crews' eye view of the dam, only I was enjoying a nice cup of lemon tea on a sunny afternoon! Despite the daring of the raid I'm increasingly thinking that it's something that we here in Derbyshire, as the home of Rolls-Royce, the birthplace of Sir Barnes Wallis (Ripley) and the location of the practice runs over the Derwent Dam, perhaps shouldn't crow so much, certainly when disasters like Libya come along, so maybe, in a way, it was indeed 'infamous'.
good thing czech rivers have atleast bit original names i live near otava, which supposedly comes from celtish attawa meaning something like gold rivers(?) there's a big river vltava, which comes from old germanic language, formed via same root as english wild, so wild river (quite ironic nowadays) then there's labe, german elbe which might come from latin albis (or something similar) meaning white river (also quite ironic nowadays) also ohře, from german eger, from celtic or pre-celtic(?) agar meaning river of moon, or mountains of moon (as the river had been probably named after mountains???) morava, (moravia) apparently it comes from ancient word for swamp (maybe related to englich marsh?) honestly it's suprising how many rivers come from celtish (like most of the big ones) and some simpler ostružná, river of black berries blanice, river of mud (this isn't original, there's two of them)
I think the Avon at Stratford-upon-Avon can be changed to River Shakespeare, in order to commemerate Shakespeare as well as at least distinguise from the Avon at Bath and Bristol
In our home town, we have little streams without names. We named them ‘Senn River’ (after one of our friends [we didn’t know the Seine River in France was pronounced the same way]) and the Invisis River (Latin for undiscovered, because it took a year of exploration of the forest to find it.)
Hey, just a quick note at 5:02 - Muscogee is pronounced muhs-SKO-gee, with a hard G, as in Garden or Grant. In some early spellings, it's even Muskoke. Interestingly, given your video topic, the Muscogee people are sometimes referred to as the Creek Confederacy, though the tribes are trying to get folks to use Muscogee instead.
@@nathangamble125 or Newton Lockyer as an alternative proposal. I see somebody has dubbed it Crimebrook. Cranbrook Kent is about the same size but a thousand years older. Harry Hill comes from there. Cranbrook School is a famous state school. It has a full array of shops and banks, unlike the one in Devon.
Never realize until now, but France also has a few Ouse (Oise), most certainly same etymological origin. North America counts a dozen Red and Grand rivers between native, Spanish, French and English names (ie Colorado, Rio Grande, La Grande… in some case they literally just went for North, South, etc branch. I truly prefer native names (Susquehanna, Connecticut, Ohio,…)
I always wondered if the Oise in France was related to the various Ouses in England (there is also the Great Ouse in East Anglia). They spoke a Celtic language in France too.
I live near the town of Northumberland, PA, USA. The town is named after a place in the UK, but I never understood the name. I became a fan of the Vikings TV show on the History Channel. I learned quite a bit of English geography from the show, including that Northumberland was the land north of the Humber river in England. Makes sense.
I knew about several of these meaning "river" or "water" but for some reason it had never crossed my mind that these were probably the inspiration for the Hobbits calling the small river by Hobbiton "The Water".
As I live just a few yard from the Border Esk , and there a quite a few Esks and Usks arouond , I would love to know if thats a Galic name for water . As Whisky means water of life . Just guessing . Is it connected to the word whisk , to froth up ?
So about the Hatchie River (4:58). Hatchie does come from a Mvskoke (Ma-skohk-kee)/Old Chahta word for river, yes, but when it was Anglicized they dropped of the rest of the name and keep the bit they could sort-of pronounce. It isn't what the Mvskoke would likely have called it in full, and is more of a coincidence the English-adopted name is recognizably a word for "river" in our languages than anything. This is suuuuper common all across the US Southeast--most rivers have either colonial Spanish/French names that have been hacked to bits over time, or they're corruptions of Indigenous names (or a combination of the two!) There are plenty of rivers in the South that have some version of "hatcha" at the front, because that is the Old Chahta/Mvskoke word for river. Atchafalaya comes from "Hatcha Falaya," for instance. There are also lots of cities named after rivers but where one or the other of the English names doesn't necessarily match. For example: Tuscaloosa, Alabama on the Black Warrior River comes from "Bok/Hatcha Tvshka Lusa"--Chahta for "Black Warrior River" I reckon this sort of thing has played itself out in lots of places, especially in a country like England that has had many inhabitants speaking not only many languages, but many dialects of them over thousands of years. Names get chopped or changed and the bit that's consistently passed on generation to generation is the part that means "river" or "water," since it's probably common enough to enter the lexicon of each new wave of settlers &/or keep itself from fading away as the language shifts and meanders through the course of time.
Another solution to this problem is for the rivers to keep their names, but add compass points to them, North Avon, South Avon, etc. You forgot to mention that there is a river called the Thames in the USA, more specifically Connecticut, with New London on its banks.
Fascinating! It’s interesting that the place which created the English language has so few river names. But then, perhaps in the US too many rivers are named after problematic individuals as opposed to physical features or regional references. Also, I love how your accent pronounces the word people as “pee-poh-wah”.
Lol, this reminds me of the Simpsons gag about changing names of things to honor Ronald Reagan. Someone suggests changing the name of the Mississippi River to the Mississippi Reagan.
I live near the upper (northern part) of the Mississippi. There is a simple way to solve the dilemma of so many rivers with the same name. Rename them ALL. The repeating of River Names is reflected in community names, and to solve that, Stratford is called Stratford on Avon, whereas other Stratfords are called Stratford on Something or Another. Hence, to solve the name of rivers, call them Avon in Kent (or of Kent), Avon in Yorkshire, Avon in Wales etc, all based on the longest distance, so for Avon in Kent, while it might run through multiple Counties, it's longest stretch runs through Kent, hence it would become Avon in Kent, or Avon of Kent, or something like that.
I‘ve always been fascinated by the history of hydronyms. How is it that the same river even has a consistent name? Why didn‘t the folks who used to live by the mouth of a river in pre- or early historic times not call it something completely different from those living several hundred km upstream? Did they know about each other’s names? Did they coordinate? I suppose that goes back to the idea that the human world has almost always been more interconnected than we‘ve until recently thought.
Rivers don't always have the same name for the entire length- in Oxford the River Thames is also known as the Isis... though that name has taken a bit of a beating in the last ten years or so!
All the problems with place names in Britain comes about because the English refusal to correctly study British names and then learn and apply the correct translations.
I grew up in Stratford upon Avon. So when I found out there were other avons in Somerset and Wiltshire it confused me. Not to mention there’s also a Stratford in Greater London
Swedish "Lagan" comes from older Swedish "lagher", which is related to Old Icelandic "lǫgr", Latin "lacus" etc...and then you have "loch" over in Scotland. And they all mean "river" or "water".
I think we still tend to do the thing that causes rivers to get unimaginative names. For example, a Londoner will talk about the Thames as "The River" (as in "not going South of The River this time of night). I now live near the Paraibuna in Brazil - everyone calls the The River. By the way, if your "going to go with the word vague" you ought to spell it correctly ;-)
If you're going to correct Patrick on his spelling you could at least get your grammar and punctuation right while doing so. Also, I think you missed out the proper name for the river that flows through Paraibuna which appears to be the Paraíba do Sul.
Do you live near a river? If so which one?
Drina
avon (the one in england)
Los Angeles -river- storm drain
Only former canals really, they say there is more rubbish in the canals than Venice
The Tualatin river
Theres only one Thames but there's a Thame (a tributary of the Thames, in Oxfordshire), a Tame in the West Midlands, another Tame in Greater Manchester (a tributary of the Mersey), another Tame in Yorkshire (tributary of the Tees) a Team in Tyneside and a Tamar in Devon/Cornwall. Their names all come from the same Brittonic root (tam-, likely meaning dark or muddy).
That's extremely interesting. Just yesterday I was having a trawl though my Finnish language book, compiling a list of suspected links in vocabulary between Finnish and Czech, despite one being a Fenno-Ugrian and the other an Indo-European language. One of those words was 'tumma' in Finnish and 'tmavý' in Czech, both meaning 'dark'. It's only now that the English word 'dim' has leapt out as a word possibly related to that 'tam-' root and also to 'tumma' and 'tmavý'. 'Dim' also brings to mind the Finnish 'tomu' ('dust') and Czech 'dým' ('smoke') - both things that have a darkening effect.
but a river might be teeming with fish , so does it mean full of fish?
don't forget the River Teme.
@@hadz8671 It's only now, on looking at a map with the River Teme thereon, that it's struck me that the 'Ten' in Tenbury Wells, which lies on the river, may be a corruption of Teme. I initially thought that the River Teme may, therefore, be more closely related to a river none too far away from me, the River Tean, which joins the River Dove near Uttoxeter. However, of course, Teme is going to pre-date Tenbury Wells by quite some degree, so maybe it is in that 'Tam-'/'Tham-'/'Team' group of rivers after all.
As I am always on the look-out for rivers abroad that relate to ours I should well imagine that the Timiş, which becomes the Tamiš when it leaves Romania for Serbia, joining the Danube just downstream of Belgrade, is part of this picture. Timişoara (Temesvár in Hungarian and Temeschburg in German) is clearly named after that river, that to Hungarian speakers is the Temes...which is just one letter away from the River Teme!
@@christopherbentley7289To my knowledge, Proto-Finnic has been influenced by Proto-Baltic and Proto-Germanic. Uralic and IE languages in general have interacted for millenia
Although the River Thames has a tributary river called the river Thame
6:14: Vauge? (Vague)
There's also a Don in Russia, two Sèvres in France, two Stours in the East of England and at least two rivers simply called Rio Grande ("big river") in the Americas.
On top of that, the Thames randomly changes its name for a stretch as it's known as the Isis when it flows through Oxford.
As far as the Rio Grande(s) go, it's because the actual colonial Spanish name is long, and most folx living nearby shortened it to just "Rio Grande." This is especially common in modern Texas--almost all the river names go by shorter versions of the colonial names (eg, the Brazos is shortened down from "Rio Los Brazos de Dios," Red River is a short translation of "Rio Rojo del Sur"). I think that's how a lot of waterways wind up with similar names--they started out as "River X," but then folx dropped of the qualifier over time, or forgot, or changed language, etc. The part that gets remembered is the shorthand the locals use, not necessarily the "formal" name.
@@Strider_Bvlbaha I didn't know that about the Brazos (it brings to mind the full original name for the city of L.A. though) so that's interesting.
Isn't the Southern Red River so called to distinguish it from the rivière Rouge up in Canada though? Or are there more than two Red Rivers? It honestly wouldn't surprise me! 😆
@@FoggyD There are...a lot of Red Rivers. Pretty sure that there's also one in Argentina. But there is a "Red River of the North" somewhere waaaay up north. Might be the one in Canada, might be somewhere else. Possible there is one in Canada and one in the US--colonial names are confusing as heck.
Speaking of confusing Canadian rivers, there are North Canadian AND South Canadian Rivers in Oklahoma (for added confusion, they join and flow into the Arkansas River not too far from where the Illinois River flows into the Arkansas--all while still in Oklahoma!)
@@Strider_Bvlbaha Cool (if confusing) facts!
Can't find evidence of an Argentine Red River, but there seems to be one in the Dominican Republic so there are definitely a lot of them around.
@@Strider_Bvlbaha Yah, the US and Canada share a Red River of the North, which runs on the Minnesota-North Dakota border in the US, and continues into Manitoba Canada to empty into Lake Winnipeg. (The lake itself drains to Hudson Bay in the Arctic via a different river.) And yah, a bunch of Spanish-speaking countries have a Rio Rojo ("red river") or a Rio Colorado ("red/colored river").
Likely many of these are named for mud and silt tinting their water a reddish color at some point on their course.
In Welsh, a single letter F Is pronounced the same as a V in English- so the Welsh "Afon" for river is closer to the English Avon than you said it in the video, but with a short A Rather than a long one. Though that would be hard to get across in the video without going off on a massive tangent about Welsh orthography!
The Avon river just outside of Perth is pronounced locally as the Av-on (av like in the word 'have', on like well, the word 'on'). Would that be closer to the Welsh 'Afon'?
0:42 You forget the 3 River Avons in Scotland too lol. To add my bit, my idea for how to fix this similar names problem is to just maybe keep the names for sentimental reasons, but just add an additional suffix to the names, such as "The River Avon of Bristol" or "River Avon of Strathspay".
There's also a River Ouse in Norfolk. What confuses me is why when speaking about rivers we prefix the name with "River" rather than suffix it. It's the "Thames Estuary" but the "River Thames" not the "Thames River."
I feel like that's mostly a British/European thing. Here in the US pretty much all rivers are [Name] River like the Mississippi River, Colorado River, Colombia River, etc. The only major river that's an exception to this is the Rio Grande which comes from Spanish. (Even though that name has never been used in Spanish and Spanish speakers outside the US call it Río Bravo)
Edit: just now realizing that you probably meant "we" as in Brits rather than "we" as in all English speakers but it's still an interesting difference in the way the US and UK name things
@@mintcervida6372 Yet in US English you have Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Mead, Lake Huron etc.... And then in the same breath, Toluca Lake,, Yellowstone Lake, Table Rock Lake, Kentucky Lake.
@@davidkgame They do that in Scotland and Ireland to. Loch Ness, Loch Neagh. In England, anything goes. Tarns, Meres, Waters, Lake.
edited because I'm a spelling biff.
I'd guess a runover of old word-order.
By saying the River Thames, you're describing Thames as a river. Thames Estuary is the Estuary described by Thames, so-to-speak, hence it would longer be the River Thames Estuary, or the Estuary of Thames the River, like descriptor-noun-subdescriptor (if that makes sense).
Imagine, for a second, that there's a city also named Thames. To differentiate, you'd likely say the city of Thames, as you say the city of London, it's like that. City Thames and River Thames
Heck, could also be that River Thames sets up that it's a river and then tells you its name afterwards, hence Thames Estuary sets up that it's related to Thames and is described as its Estuary. Go back to River Thames Estuary and you have that it is a river named thames, but specifically its Estuary.
I could also just be mad and overthinking a germanic language that has existed long enough to be butchered by the adoption and absorption of countless other languages both romantic and germanic.
There was a Thames River in New Zealand that did get renamed to a Maori name (Waihou). My internet sources give a date of 1947 for the name change. The region of its catchment area is still sometimes referred to as "Thames Valley" - quite often by people who are unaware of the reason why
Thames Valley is the name of the Provincial Rugby Union of the area, and the town at the foot of 'The Firth of Thames' is also called Thames.
Australia should just name four of their Avons "Beevon", "Ceevon", "Deevon" and "Eevon".
"The name Don for a river can be found in Lancashire, Tyne and Wear, Yorkshire, and even Aberdeenshire"
And also in Rostov Oblast!
This can be very confusing - last winter I remember hearing flood warnings for "the Avon in Wiltshire" and then having to try and figure out WHICH River Avon in Wiltshire they were talking about....
It's odd that the Clyde in Scotland is commfonly known by it's English name, but its namesake in New Zealand is known by it's Scottish name - the Clutha.
same with Dunedin (which comes from Gaelic ‘Dùn Èideann’ for Edinburgh and of course is still named this way by Gaels but just not in English)
Known as Clutha in Scotland also...
Thanks - I've never realised Clutha and Clyde were effectively the same name, especially given there is a town called Clyde on the banks of the Clutha River.
Strathclyde Brittonic?
@@jbw416 Well, Edinburgh was never a Gaelic settlement, it was settled by the Anglo-Saxons and was part of the Kingdom of Northumberland. So it makes sense that in English it's referred to by an Anglicised version as that's it's original name.
@5:30 Afon in welsh is not pronounced with an F, but a V. Welsh has different phonetics for its alphabet.
There are a couple of River Wey. I grew up in Weymouth, the mouth of the River Wey, in Dorset. There is also a River Wey , a main tributary of the River Thames in south east England. Its two branches, one of which rises near Alton in Hampshire and the other in West Sussex to the south of Haslemere,[n 1] join at Tilford in Surrey. Once combined the flow is eastwards then northwards via Godalming and Guildford to meet the Thames at Weybridge.
Given that Wey is pronounced the same way as 'weigh' I have long wondered if there is a relationship with the Váh in Slovakia, that I know personally from having been beside its banks in Žilina on a particularly chilly day in January 2017, when it had been down as low as - 21°C, with some of its edges frozen over. 'Váhy' is Slovak for 'scales' and, furthermore, the German-language variant of Váh, Waag, is clearly linked to the German for 'scales', 'Waage'.
@@christopherbentley7289 and the Wye (2 of them also in England)? But there are theories the Latin vaga meant 'winding' and the Germanic was 'wave'
You overlooked the two Avons in Scotland - one in the Cairngorms and one in Falkirk.
There's also a 24 mile River Avon (aka Avon Water) in Lanarkshire which is a tributary of the Clyde. The town of Strathaven (pron. "Straven") takes it's name from the river.
In the old county of Sussex there are two different rivers named Rother. Their names have distinct origins. One is named after a bridge, the Rotherbridge, which is from an old Anglo-Saxon place name meaning "cattle bridge." The other is named after a village, Rotherfield, that is near its source. Rotherfield derives from an Old English name meaning 'open land of the cattle.' So both rivers get their name from 'cattle..' Interestingly, there's another Rother in England, in South Yorkshire, but its name derives from Celtic, and meant either 'Great Water' or 'Red Water.'
So there's a Rother in Sussex, and there's a'rother one in Yorkshire?
@@nathangamble125
No. _Two_ Rothers in Sussex. One in South Yorkshire.
There are two Rivers Calder which have sources almost next to one another near the Lancs/W Yorks border. One flows west to join the River Ribble and the other flows east to join the River Aire.
appears there are 6 of them in Scotland too. Probably Brittonic?
Then there's Esk - two in England, two in Scotland (along with two South Esks and two Norht Esks). Not surprising really since the name derives from an early Celtic word for water ... as do rivers Usk, Axe and Exe (and whisky).
Celtic word for water is Dwr, dwr.fa - Dw fa. DOVER
We live alongside the Hampshire River Avon. The stream here that flows into it is the Lin Brook, which comes from the Celtic word for water or stream so the Brook Brook flows into the River River.
In Warwickshire the River Avon flows around the foot of Bredon Hill, which means "River river by hill, hill, hill" in three different dialects
In Ukraine there are a lot of rivers with combination *"D-N"* Dnipro, Donets, Dnister, Dunai, Desna. Apparently it's from Sarmatian Dānu "the river".
This also adds to the issue where some English cities have to use "add-ons" to describe which one you are talking about, and these usually are geographic. Stafford-upon-Avon, Newastle-upon-Tyne, and Minster-on-Sea, to name a few. I don't know if this is an issue in other countries, even in Europe. In America, we obviously have a lot of towns with the same name, (for example, there's an Orange Beach, CA and an Orange Beach, AL) but never two within the same state, so the state becomes the denominator. Suppose it could arise from the same problem of places being named by people who had no idea that there was another town of the same name on the other side of the island, especially when you take into account the fact that there were as many as seven different kingdoms within modern-day England simultaneously in the wake of the Anglo-Saxon migrations.
Yah, the US Post Office Department (today's US Postal Service) especially required post office names to be unique within a state, so mail could be sorted and routed correctly. (Especially since zip codes didn't exist until the 1960s.) And since having a town name different from the post office name would be confusing in itself...
As a sidebar: Unique town names could be a problem in newly-settled territories because of this. Where many new communities were being founded, the existing maps and directories went out of date pretty quickly. And with no computers or internet yet, you couldn't google a name to see if it was taken. So many a town's founders would submit a proposed town name ... only to have to go with a second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc...) choice instead. Quite a few oddball names came from this legal need to be unique -- "You can call it Hell [Michigan] for all I care", "Nowthen, what should we name our new [Minnesota] town", "I guess we're still Nameless [Georgia, Tennessee, Texas] for now", etc.
There are 7 Springfields in Wisconsin and only 2 in England.
paucity of names here in Sweden...check out this one (oak village) sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekeby
5:43 Usa is not to be confused with a country you have definitely heard of.
WTF IS A KILOMETERRRR🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
There is also a Don River in Toronto I believe. Ontario has a lot of British names in the southwest due to a governor general we once had who wanted the place to be a little England, He named a city London and the river it was on the Thames River. He wanted this to be the new capital of the province but he later admitted that Toronto was better.
You're right about the Don River in Toronto. There is also a River Avon in Ontario, which flows through the city of Stratford.
There's one in Russia as well.
I'm not sure if they're etymologically related, or whether it's a coincidence.
For about 20 years,Bristol was in a county called Avon! Avon still applies to a variety of things, 25 years after the county disappeared!!! Great video.
The same things happens in Portuguese/Portugal.
Not only river names repeat over and over, they also come in "families".
You not only have several rivers called "Cabril", you also have several rivers called "Cabrum" and "Cabrão" - and often they are close to each other, or one is a tributary to another similarly-named river.
The same with "Paiva", "Paivó" and "Paivô".
Great video! The fact that the river names were often the oldest named is something I've never considered, but it makes sense. Moscow, for example, is named after River Moskva, and no one really knows what Moskva means - some ancient name, I suppose!
Here in Czechia, we have a river called Jizera. There is an Isère in France and Isar in Germany. Same Celtic name.
I think it's interesting that the Arabic word "Jazira" has a similar meaning, of an island, peninsula, or an area surrounded by rivers (e.g. upper Mesopotamia is called al-Jazira), despite being derived from a completely different language family (Indo-European vs Semitic). "Jazira" is likely to have developed from a loanword which meant "wooden bridge" in the ancient Sumerian language, which is neither Indo-European nor Semitic.
Perhaps it's a term that has somehow remained somewhat conserved over thousands of years of language evolution and divergence, or was passed between cultures relatively recently despite being a very old word, or maybe it's just a coincidence?
and the Oise :-)
In Poland I've found many share their name with a nearby town
I'm named after a nederlandish river whose name changes 3 times along it's length, ultimately having the Rhine as its headwaters
As I heard it, indeed the locals didn't travel much so just used the name river or similar, but may have had a name for the river. This wasn't a problem till 1066 when William I had the Doomsday Book created auditing the whole of his newly conquered land! Of course he spoke French like his country men conducting the survey , so when they spoke to the locals pointing to the river and asking "what is that" probably expecting the name of the river they more often than not were given the word for river in the local language (either old Briton or Celtic or Norse). Which was duly noted down for the survey and became the official name for said river!
The Netherlands alone has over 30 rivers or streams called Aa!
Most of these have the name of where they flow through though!
There are at least to rivers called the Frome (pronounced Froom), one a tributary of the Bristol Avon and one running through the town of Frome in Somerset. The word is believed to mean "fast flowing".
Oh, so that's how Froome won the Tour De France 4 times: He was frome.
The "Wear" in "Tyne and Wear" and is the name of the river that flows through Sunderland is pronounced more like "Wee-yuh", not like "where".
I pronounce the 'wh' like 'wh' tho :-)
As someone who used to live in the village of hill hill, located near the hill hill hill and is on the banks of the river river... how dare you claim our naming of things is bad...
Adding vauge to the list along with rouge (for rogue) and chaise lounge (for chaise longue)
frequently you see 'baugettes' for sale here in Stockholm
Well, the Avons in Australia are usually a side-river to something, so one could call them Avon-to-Swan or Avon-to-Cloucester. And for the river of Stratford-upon-Avon, you could change the river's name to Avon-long-Stratford... but you'd have to change the town's name, too, I guess 😂
Sorry, I'm feeling rather silly today.
Is "Stratford-upon-Avon" the official name of the town or is it "Stratford"?
@@pauljackson3491 Officially the town's name is Stratford-upon-Avon but in all but official circumstances just gets called Stratford; whenever places are called "Place-upon-River" that's always the official name, but almost always gets called just "Place".
Only exception is when there's multiple cities/towns with the same name, for example Newcastle-under-Lyme is normally called by its full name as "Newcastle" on its own almost always means Newcastle upon Tyne which is by far the bigger and more distinct city (Newcastle under Lyme being part of the urban area of Stoke).
Well spotted that we have a river “Lagan” in Sweden as well! In fact, it is located in a part of Sweden that used to belong to Denmark, and the Danish vikings sailed westwards, so a connection isn’t completely out of the question.
As I wrote in another comment:
'Swedish "Lagan" comes from older Swedish "lagher", which is related to Old Icelandic "lǫgr", Latin "lacus" etc...and then you have "loch" over in Scotland. And they all mean "river" or "water".'
@@Lindormber or lake
(Perhaps not so) fun fact: The name of the Polish river you mentioned is Drwęca, not Drewenz - that one is what it went by among Prussians when it served as a border river between the territories controlled by Prussia and Russia in XIXth century. While not wrong per se (I suppose it's still called that in German), it's a bit surprising to see its name in a foreign language nowadays ;). To be fair though, there had been several versions of this name throughout times, some more germanic other more slavic, depending on whom you asked and who had the rights to draw maps at the time. There are also at least 3 theories for its etymology, none of which seem to be related to oak trees or clear water of the British 'Derwent' family (we have those as well but they sound different), but rather to the boring 'water', a bit more poetic 'the course of a river' or finally a bit more exciting: an early Slavic version of the verb 'tear' ('dreć') as the river had a fairly aggressive temper and "tore" at its shores. Which some scholars also believe to be the source of the names for Odra, Drawa and maybe the Czech Odrava too.
Perhaps that similarity between Drewenz and Derwent - certainly taking into account that 'z' sound-shifts to 't' from German to English - threw me out, therefore. I do remain rather more confident, however, that the Czech Dřevnice is related to Derwent. Thanks for drawing my attention to that Czech river Odrava as I'd not been aware of that.
@@christopherbentley7289 I know nothing about Czech but I'm happy to believe you on Dřevnice case. Dřevo means wood and seems to have come from the proto-indo-european dóru, which is also the source for the proto-Celtic word for oak, right?... I haven't seen anything in support of the Czech word pointing to oak trees in particular, but then again my "research" was 5 minutes on Google, and being Polish I'm tempted to believe the false friends between our languages way too often to trust my instincts ;)
@@yuaelt I don't think that Dřevnice would be anything to do specifically with oak trees as the Czech for oak is dub, so if there were a river in the Czech Republic specifically oak-related it would be called something like 'Dubnice', which does not exist anywhere, although there are settlements of that name. Is there a river in Poland whose name is based on dąb? That idea of 'false friends' between Czech and Polish and the Czech for oak brings to mind that strange relationship in names of months. The Czech for April is duben - the month of oaks - which in Polish, of course, is Kwiecień - the month of flowers (?) - whereas the Czech for May is květen - the month of flowers - which in Polish is Maj.
@@yuaelt Subsequent to that, since I am familiar with bits of Finnish, it came back to me that Finnish has a 'month of oaks' - Tammikuu - but that's January.
@@christopherbentley7289
You're right, but I was wondering if the older proto-indo-european word could have originally meant oak and then the use widened to more generic wood, or was it originally wood, and then only on the western side started being associated with oaks. The latter seems more logical but that might be naiive on my part. I'm not aware of any Polish rivers named after "dąb" but just like in Czechia, there are villages and cities named after it.
And the months thing... that's always interesting when they're not numbers, right? :)
One of the theories for the Polish name of January is that it's from the practice of making wooden sticks around that time which would later be uses as support for plants. I suppose between "the month when the ground freezes" and "the cold and harsh month" our people wanted some variety :D. I wonder if the Finnish name could have similar connections (like, maybe January was a good month for doing something with the oak wood?)
Gladly I'm pretty sure most Portuguese rivers have unique names. Only exceptions I could find were Cabril, Mau, Pequeno, Torto. These last three mean Bad, Small and Crooked. No idea why Cabril is popular, though
There's a Thames River in Connecticut, United States, but in that case the name is pronounced exactly how it's spelled.
What? Like Þames?
In Sweden we have quite a few Svartån, "Black River". But I still think we have a bigger set of different river names than the UK
I wonder how many up north have retained a Sami name somewhere or if they were completely renamed
There are (to my knowledge) two Red Rivers in North America. They're sometimes distinguished by adding the phrase "of the North" or "of the South".
Correct. I grew up on the banks of the Red River (of the North) that flows into Lake Winnipeg.
The other Red River is a major tributary of the Lower Mississippi.
There are two Mississippis, with the smaller one in Eastern Ontario, Canada.
Doing a lab report for uni on the plastics found in our local river just to find there’s four other bloody River Stours. It means fast-flowing or turbid so it makes sense but only care about my one lol
There are at least two rivers called the Dee in Scotland as well as the Cheshire one. I live on the bank of the river Ayr ( in Ayrshire) and I think its name root is the same as the Aire in Yorkshire. A tributary of the R Ayr is the Lugar which might be a unique river name in the UK. Ayrshire also has a River Doon ( one of the fastest flowing in Scotland as it drops 700 feet in thirty odd miles ) I don't know if that name is Don related.
I have the „Der Brockhaus Atlas“ from 1937 - a fascinating insight into how a citizen of Third Reich Germany would have seen the world - which has a map in the historical section of the Roman Empire with the names of the rivers in original Latin. The Loire is down as the 'Liger', so you never know, that River Lugar may be unique in this country, but it has relatives abroad. Incidentally, mentioning the Loire brings to mind the peculiarity that there is a smaller Loir nearby, so when one thinks that there's a mistake in my 'Times Concise Atlas of the World' where there are «départements» called Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire and Indre-et-Loire, but ones called Loir-et-Cher and Eure-et-Loir, the last two are named after that smaller river without the '-e' on the end! That 'other' river joins at the left bank of the Maine shortly upstream of Angers, the Maine very soon thereafter joining at the right bank of its larger near-namesake.
There's also a Dee on the Yorkshire/Cumbria border that flows into the Lune. It gives its name to Dentdale. From what I know about the Don in Yorkshire near where I live it came from the pre-celtic river goddess Danu so you maybe get your Don in Scotland, Russia and in the Danube. An old local rhyme points to human sacrifice "The shelving slimy River Don, Each year a daughter or a son"
@@antonycharnock2993 There's a Dee down in Kirkcudbrightshire too.
@@antonycharnock2993 I have long wondered if the river that's the Dyje in the Czech Republic and the Thaya in Austria is in any way related to our various Rivers Dee. I suppose Thaya would also possibly feed back to our Tay. I'm glad you referred to the Danube as I've known that personally at various places, four where it is the Donau and one where it is the Dunaj, those places being its source in Donaueschingen, Ulm, Regensburg, Passau - the „Dreiflüßestadt“ ('Three-River City'), where the Danube, Inn and Ilz join together - and Bratislava/Petržalka (on four occasions!). Later on in the day I was at Donaueschingen I leapt over the watershed to the upper Rhine in Konstanz as it leaves Lake Constance. As Lancaster is so named because of being the Roman settlement on the River Lune, it is a distinct possibility that the Lahn in Germany is a cognate river thereof. It strikes me as something of an irony, thinking of a certain WWII aircraft named after Lancaster, that the virtual next-door river source to that of the Lahn is none other than that of the Eder! I've had a boat trip on the Edersee, BTW and it was an unforgettable evocation of the crews' eye view of the dam, only I was enjoying a nice cup of lemon tea on a sunny afternoon! Despite the daring of the raid I'm increasingly thinking that it's something that we here in Derbyshire, as the home of Rolls-Royce, the birthplace of Sir Barnes Wallis (Ripley) and the location of the practice runs over the Derwent Dam, perhaps shouldn't crow so much, certainly when disasters like Libya come along, so maybe, in a way, it was indeed 'infamous'.
In Welsh it's Afon Dyfrdwy. No confusion!!
We Floridians have the same problem; we got two different Withlacoochee & New Rivers (I guess it’s one of the things we inherited from the British😂).
good thing czech rivers have atleast bit original names
i live near otava, which supposedly comes from celtish attawa meaning something like gold rivers(?)
there's a big river vltava, which comes from old germanic language, formed via same root as english wild, so wild river (quite ironic nowadays)
then there's labe, german elbe which might come from latin albis (or something similar) meaning white river (also quite ironic nowadays)
also ohře, from german eger, from celtic or pre-celtic(?) agar meaning river of moon, or mountains of moon (as the river had been probably named after mountains???)
morava, (moravia) apparently it comes from ancient word for swamp (maybe related to englich marsh?)
honestly it's suprising how many rivers come from celtish (like most of the big ones)
and some simpler
ostružná, river of black berries
blanice, river of mud (this isn't original, there's two of them)
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much Gaabagol
There's an Avon in Scotland - expected that to be mentioned tbh. There's also a Tyne, Eden, Esk, 2 Almonds, Dee, 3 Carrons
*vague* *recurring* *things*
Laggan too
There are several Avons in Scotland.
@@robertfoulkes1832 sorry, I was being Falkirk-centric
I live near to the Forth, Devon and Black Devon. I knew about the Don in Aberdeenshire but not any of the others.
6:06 That's not how you spell VAGUE. Also, why didn't you mention similar names of rivers like the Ex, Ax, Ux and Ox?
There's a river Drwęca in Poland and rivers Druance and Durance (from Durentia) in France.
Bourne/bourn is another word for river. In Birmingham there is a small river called The Bourne, and theres also the Bourn Brook.
In Coventry they have the Sherbourne river, which derives from "shire burn"
I think the Avon at Stratford-upon-Avon can be changed to River Shakespeare, in order to commemerate Shakespeare as well as at least distinguise from the Avon at Bath and Bristol
But then it wouldn't be Stratford-upon-'Avon'. Saying Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-'Shakespeare' doesn't sound right. 😂
@@jamesbernardini9063and he'd also be the "Bard of Shakespeare" which is silly.
there is also the river great ouse in Cambridgeshire
There is a River Avon in Scotland as well.
There are several Avons in Scotland
I thought Avon was makeup and Derwent was pencils.
In our home town, we have little streams without names. We named them ‘Senn River’ (after one of our friends [we didn’t know the Seine River in France was pronounced the same way]) and the Invisis River (Latin for undiscovered, because it took a year of exploration of the forest to find it.)
the thing funny about avon is that it is just river in celtic
River river
Hey, just a quick note at 5:02 - Muscogee is pronounced muhs-SKO-gee, with a hard G, as in Garden or Grant. In some early spellings, it's even Muskoke. Interestingly, given your video topic, the Muscogee people are sometimes referred to as the Creek Confederacy, though the tribes are trying to get folks to use Muscogee instead.
There's 3 rivers called Blackwater in Ireland. So you have the Munster blackwater, Leinster Blackwater and Ulster blackwater
Some names are back formations from places. The Kent town of Cranbrook had a River Crane, but that was named from the town.
I used to live in Cranbrook... but the one in Devon, not Kent.
As far as I can tell, the Cranbrook in Devon is named after the one in Kent.
@@nathangamble125 or Newton Lockyer as an alternative proposal. I see somebody has dubbed it Crimebrook. Cranbrook Kent is about the same size but a thousand years older. Harry Hill comes from there. Cranbrook School is a famous state school. It has a full array of shops and banks, unlike the one in Devon.
Never realize until now, but France also has a few Ouse (Oise), most certainly same etymological origin. North America counts a dozen Red and Grand rivers between native, Spanish, French and English names (ie Colorado, Rio Grande, La Grande… in some case they literally just went for North, South, etc branch. I truly prefer native names (Susquehanna, Connecticut, Ohio,…)
I always wondered if the Oise in France was related to the various Ouses in England (there is also the Great Ouse in East Anglia). They spoke a Celtic language in France too.
wow, just had a wee dip into the etymology: Latin possibly borrowed from Celtic, borrowed from earlier proto Indo European 'rapids' or 'fast flowing'
I live near the town of Northumberland, PA, USA. The town is named after a place in the UK, but I never understood the name. I became a fan of the Vikings TV show on the History Channel. I learned quite a bit of English geography from the show, including that Northumberland was the land north of the Humber river in England. Makes sense.
settled by the Angles, expanded into modern day Scotland as far as Edinburgh, shrank and then the Vikings piled in
I knew about several of these meaning "river" or "water" but for some reason it had never crossed my mind that these were probably the inspiration for the Hobbits calling the small river by Hobbiton "The Water".
As I live just a few yard from the Border Esk , and there a quite a few Esks and Usks arouond , I would love to know if thats a Galic name for water . As Whisky means water of life . Just guessing . Is it connected to the word whisk , to froth up ?
The Irish language name for water is uisce.
There's also a Thames River in Connecticut, USA starting in Norwich, CT and running past New London, CT.
The Thames in Canada also flows through a city called London.
There's at least one Thames in the US, too, in the state of Connecticut. Though we pronounce it like James
And the town at its mouth is called New London, where the US builds its nuclear submarines.
So about the Hatchie River (4:58). Hatchie does come from a Mvskoke (Ma-skohk-kee)/Old Chahta word for river, yes, but when it was Anglicized they dropped of the rest of the name and keep the bit they could sort-of pronounce. It isn't what the Mvskoke would likely have called it in full, and is more of a coincidence the English-adopted name is recognizably a word for "river" in our languages than anything. This is suuuuper common all across the US Southeast--most rivers have either colonial Spanish/French names that have been hacked to bits over time, or they're corruptions of Indigenous names (or a combination of the two!)
There are plenty of rivers in the South that have some version of "hatcha" at the front, because that is the Old Chahta/Mvskoke word for river. Atchafalaya comes from "Hatcha Falaya," for instance. There are also lots of cities named after rivers but where one or the other of the English names doesn't necessarily match. For example: Tuscaloosa, Alabama on the Black Warrior River comes from "Bok/Hatcha Tvshka Lusa"--Chahta for "Black Warrior River"
I reckon this sort of thing has played itself out in lots of places, especially in a country like England that has had many inhabitants speaking not only many languages, but many dialects of them over thousands of years. Names get chopped or changed and the bit that's consistently passed on generation to generation is the part that means "river" or "water," since it's probably common enough to enter the lexicon of each new wave of settlers &/or keep itself from fading away as the language shifts and meanders through the course of time.
Another solution to this problem is for the rivers to keep their names, but add compass points to them, North Avon, South Avon, etc. You forgot to mention that there is a river called the Thames in the USA, more specifically Connecticut, with New London on its banks.
Fascinating! It’s interesting that the place which created the English language has so few river names. But then, perhaps in the US too many rivers are named after problematic individuals as opposed to physical features or regional references. Also, I love how your accent pronounces the word people as “pee-poh-wah”.
so few names...in 3 or 4 languages :-)
Because these places were already settled and named by other prior to Englands founding and rise.
Lol, this reminds me of the Simpsons gag about changing names of things to honor Ronald Reagan. Someone suggests changing the name of the Mississippi River to the Mississippi Reagan.
8:13 A London can also be found in Ontario so it makes sense
There is a Don River in Russia (Don hence Rostov Na Donu) and Ukraine (Donets hence Donetsk Oblast)
And of course the Danube (Donau in German).
I live near the upper (northern part) of the Mississippi. There is a simple way to solve the dilemma of so many rivers with the same name. Rename them ALL. The repeating of River Names is reflected in community names, and to solve that, Stratford is called Stratford on Avon, whereas other Stratfords are called Stratford on Something or Another. Hence, to solve the name of rivers, call them Avon in Kent (or of Kent), Avon in Yorkshire, Avon in Wales etc, all based on the longest distance, so for Avon in Kent, while it might run through multiple Counties, it's longest stretch runs through Kent, hence it would become Avon in Kent, or Avon of Kent, or something like that.
You'd never meet at just 'the Avon'. it would be like saying "Let's meet at the Thames" - does that mean LondonBridge or Richmond?
I‘ve always been fascinated by the history of hydronyms. How is it that the same river even has a consistent name? Why didn‘t the folks who used to live by the mouth of a river in pre- or early historic times not call it something completely different from those living several hundred km upstream? Did they know about each other’s names? Did they coordinate? I suppose that goes back to the idea that the human world has almost always been more interconnected than we‘ve until recently thought.
Rivers don't always have the same name for the entire length- in Oxford the River Thames is also known as the Isis... though that name has taken a bit of a beating in the last ten years or so!
'Vague' is misspelt on here, but, good video 🙂
All the problems with place names in Britain comes about because the English refusal to correctly study British names and then learn and apply the correct translations.
Reminds me of where classmates of me tried to convince the english teacher that stanley is a very famous river in Wales.
The River Thames in Ontario flowing through parts of Middlesex County and London, Ontario
I grew up in Stratford upon Avon. So when I found out there were other avons in Somerset and Wiltshire it confused me. Not to mention there’s also a Stratford in Greater London
there's also a Don river in Russia. Pretty big one too.
Swedish "Lagan" comes from older Swedish "lagher", which is related to Old Icelandic "lǫgr", Latin "lacus" etc...and then you have "loch" over in Scotland. And they all mean "river" or "water".
A bit nitpicky but the word afon is pronounced with a V sound, not an F sound
There is a river avon scotland that flows in to the river Forth
And at least two others
It's not about simplicity, even if rivers have complicated names, locals just call it "the river".
I think we still tend to do the thing that causes rivers to get unimaginative names. For example, a Londoner will talk about the Thames as "The River" (as in "not going South of The River this time of night). I now live near the Paraibuna in Brazil - everyone calls the The River.
By the way, if your "going to go with the word vague" you ought to spell it correctly ;-)
If you're going to correct Patrick on his spelling you could at least get your grammar and punctuation right while doing so.
Also, I think you missed out the proper name for the river that flows through Paraibuna which appears to be the Paraíba do Sul.
@@FoggyDWell, no. I may not be able to spell "you're", but I do know where I live. Near the Paraibuna as I said.
I'm surprised New Zealand hasn't renamed their rivers TBH.
I'm relatively close to the Adur...
I have only just realised that there's two rivers Ouse. I stupidly assumed it was the same one stretching across the country! 😂
2:35 the fertile crescent is far bigger than the land between the tigris and euphrates.
Good video, however, Afon in Welsh is still pronounced Avon, a single F is pronounced V. Two Welsh Fs are pronounced as a single English F
I am called Leader of the Town by the Gravel River.
OH MY GOD THOSE PRONUNCIATIONS
Avon River / Ōtākaro - Christchurch, Aotearoa
The treasure was buried on the River Water. Now find this!
I don't think it's accurate to say Avon comes from Welsh afon, more like they both come from Common Brittonic *abona