There is something fascinating about river names and epithets ~characterizing phrases!. At one time or another, everybody must have wondered about the meaning of names like Atchafalaya, Irrawaddy, Murrumbidgee, Po, Winnipeg, Yangtze, and Zambezi. Such names roll melodiously off the tongue, and epithets, like “mother of waters,” “the purifier,” “river of fire,” and “scourge of the sons of Han,” conjure intriguing images. But what do the names and epithets mean, and of what relevance are they to hydraulic engineering? This forum article views rivers through the names and epithets that people have applied to rivers. Though it may seem to be a perspective of little connection to hydraulic engineering, its relevance emerges while looking back—before the advent of hydraulic engineering—to when a river’s behavior was explained in largely metaphysical terms rather than in the hydraulician’s lingo of open-channel flow and sediment transport. Initially, rivers were viewed as a landscape feature that facilitated life and occasionally threatened it. Over time, many rivers came to be viewed as hallowed places, the abode of deities, or even as deities. Indeed, the word “river,” or something about a river, often is at the etymological root of a name by which a deity is known; the Ganges, Rhine, and Clyde are three such rivers. River names and epithets often express a systematic understanding of rivers and their behavior, an understanding that predates hydraulic engineering. Rivers not only flow through the belief systems of peoples, they also flow through language and are embedded in the names of peoples and places. In an informal and somewhat blithe way, this forum article briefly traces these and other views associated with river names and epithets. This article delves only lightly into the etymological origins of river names. The obscure and largely oral origin of many names makes river etymology an inexact science, with the names of some rivers open to multiple interpretations. Numerous reference sources were used to gather the river names and epithets mentioned here. Though some references are given, most are not; the full list would extend well beyond the article’s page limit, and make the article a stodgy read. Useful references include Fenimore Cooper ~1880!; Gilmore ~1914!; Room ~1974!; Stewart ~1975!; Rand McNally ~1980!; Evans ~1981!; Brewster ~1997!; and Kalyanaraman ~1999!. The Internet is an especially fertile reference source—e.g., www. wikipedia.org, www.theoi.com, www.geocities.com, and www. linquistlist.org.
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Jul 1, 2008
Edmund Newell 
Open Access