The object of the present work is to arrange andexplain the names of European Rivers on a morecomprehensive principle than has hitherto been attemptedin England, or, to the best of my belief, inGermany.
I am conscious that, like every other work of thesame sort, it must necessarily, and without therebyimpugning its general system, be subject to correctionin many points of detail. And in particular, thatsome of its opinions might be modified or altered by amore exact knowledge of the characteristics of thevarious rivers than can possibly in all cases comewithin the scope of individual research.
Among the writers to whom I am most indebtedis Ernst Förstemann, who, in the second volume ofhis Altdeutsches Namenbuch, (the first consisting ofthe names of persons), has collected, explained, andwhere possible, identified, the ancient names of placesin Germany. The dates affixed to most of the Germanrivers are taken from this work, and refer to theearliest mention of the name in charters or elsewhere.
I also refer here, because I find that I have not, asusual, given the titles elsewhere, to Mr. R. S. Charnock's"Local Etymology," and to the work of Gluck,entitled "Die bei C. Julius Cæsar vorkommende Keltischenamen."
ROBERT FERGUSON.
The first wave of Asian immigration thatswept over Europe gave names to the greatfeatures of nature, such as the rivers, longbefore the wandering tribes that composedit settled down into fixed habitations, andgave names to their dwellings and theirlands. The names thus given at the outsetmay be taken therefore to contain some ofthe most ancient forms of the Indo-Europeanspeech. And once given, they have in many,if not in most cases remained to the presentday, for nothing affords such strong resistanceto change as the name of a river. Thesmaller streams, variously called in Englandand Scotland brooks, becks, or burns, whosecourse extended but for a few miles, andwhose shores were portioned out amongbut a few settlers, readily yielded up their[2]ancient names at the bidding of their newmasters. But the river that flowed past,coming they knew not whence, and goingthey knew not whither—upon whose shoresmight be hundreds of settlers as well asthemselves, and all as much entitled togive it a name as they—was naturally, as amatter of common convenience, allowed toretain its original appellation.
Nevertheless, it might happen that a riversuch as the Danube, which runs more thana thousand miles as the crow flies—beingdivided between two great and perfectly distinctraces, might, as it passed through thetwo different countries, be called by twodifferent names. So we find that while inits upper part it was called the Danube, inits lower part it was known as the Ister—theformer, says Zeuss (Die Deutschen),being its Celtic, and the latter its Thracianname. So the Saone also was ancientlyknown both as the Arar and the Sauconna—thelatter, according to Zeuss, being its