Vardar - Etymology

Etymology

• The most accepted theory on the origin of the name Vardar derives Bardários from Thracian, from PIE *(s)wordo-wori- 'black water' (cf. German schwarz 'black', Latin suāsum 'dirt', Ossetian xuaræn 'color', Persian xvāl 'lampblack', Old Irish sorb 'stain, dirt'). This can be considered a translation or similar meaning of Axios, itself Thracian for 'not-shining' from PIE *n.-sk(e)i (cf. Avestan axšaēna 'dark-coloured'), and found in another name at the mouth of the Danube, Axíopa "dark water", renamed in Slavic Crna voda 'black water'. The name Bardários (Βαρδάριος) was sometimes used by the Ancient Greeks in the 3rd Century BCE; the same name was widely used during the Byzantine era.

In Albanian, the word varda means a place where two creeks or rivers join together, or the joint flow of two rivers. The etymology of the word is unclear, although the Vardar river, in fact, has Lepenac as a major tributary. The word is also an adverb meaning "consecutively" or "actively" and may be related to its synonym varda(whose dictionary definition also includes "freely" or "unimpeded") and the verb vardoj/me vardue, which means "to work (extensively)." The words may ultimately derive from the Indo-European root *werǵ-, which is also the source of the English word "to work."

• Its Greek name Axios (Αξιός) is mentioned by Homer (Il. 21.141, Il. 2.849) as the home of the Paeonians, allies of Troy.

Actually, the view that it is of a Persian origin is the most probable. In Greek, Axios means "big river". in Old Church Slavonic it was called Velika, which again meant "big river". That probably means that the Slavs had translated the older Greek name. And the meaning of "Vardar" in Persian is again "big river", var meaning "big" and dar meaning "river" (like in Sirdarya and Amudarya). The last name - Vardar probably dates from the time of the arrival of the Turks (Ottomans), who used some sort of mixture of Persian and Arabic language as an official language of the Ottoman Empire and did not use Turkish words to translate the name, but Persian ones.