Etymology
The Don River, which is fed by Donets, was known in the past as Tanais to Ptolemy, and the Western Europeans recognized that the Don has a significant tributary which they called either small Tanais or Donetz. The Slavic name of Seversky Donets originates from the fact that it flowed from the Seversky Principality ("Sever" is "North" in Russian). As the Italian chronicler Alexander Guagnini wrote: "There is also another, small Tanais, which originates in the Seversky Principality and flows into the big Tanais above Azov".
Read more about this topic: Seversky Donets River
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)