Names and etymology
Names and etymology
Other names
The river was known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros (Ἴστρος)[2] a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning ‘strong, swift’, from a root possibly also encountered in the ancient name of the Dniester (Danaster in Latin, Tiras in Greek) and akin to Iranic turos ‘swift’ and Sanskrit iṣiras (इषिरस्) ‘swift’, from the PIE *isro-, *sreu ‘to flow’.[3] In the Middle Ages, the Greek Tiras was borrowed into Italian as Tyrlo and into Turkic languages as Tyrla, the latter further borrowed into Romanian as a regionalism (Turlă).[3]
The Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas,[4] “the bringer of luck”.[5]
The Middle Mongolian name for the Danube was transliterated as Tho-na in 1829 by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat.[6]
The modern languages spoken in the Danube basin all use names related to Dānuvius: German: Donau (IPA: [ˈdoːnaʊ] (About this soundlisten)); Bavarian: Doana; Silesian: Dōnaj; Upper Sorbian: Dunaj; Czech: Dunaj (IPA: [ˈdunaj]); Slovak: Dunaj (IPA: [ˈdunaj]); Polish: Dunaj (IPA: [ˈdunaj] (About this soundlisten)); Hungarian: Duna (IPA: [ˈdunɒ] (About this soundlisten)); Slovene: Donava (IPA: [ˈdóːnaʋa]); Serbo-Croatian: Dunav / Дунав (IPA: [dǔna(ː)ʋ]); Romanian: Dunărea (IPA: [ˈdunəre̯a]); Bulgarian: Дунав, romanized: Dunav (IPA: [ˈdunɐf]); Russian: Дунай, romanized: Dunaj (IPA: [dʊˈnaj]); Ukrainian: Дунай, romanized: Dunaj (IPA: [dʊˈnɑj]); Greek: Δούναβης (IPA: [ˈðunavis]); Italian: Danubio (IPA: [daˈnuːbjo]); Spanish: Danubio; (Spanish pronunciation: [daˈnuβjo]); Turkish: Tuna; Romansh: Danubi; Albanian: Tunë, definite Albanian form: Tuna.[7]
