Lietava, Lietauka or Letauka, is a

rivulet A stream is a continuous body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to by a variety of local or regional names. Long large streams ar ...

in Lithuania that is believed to have given Lithuania its name. It is 11 km in length and flows into

Neris The river Neris () or Viliya ( be, Ві́лія, pl, Wilia ) rises in northern Belarus. It flows westward, passing through Vilnius (Lithuania's capital) and in the south-centre of that country it flows into the Nemunas (Neman), at Kaunas, as ...

30 km away from

Kernavė Kernavė was a medieval capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and today is a tourist attraction and an archeological site (population 272, 2011). It is located in the Širvintos district municipality located in southeast Lithuania. A Lithuania ...

, a possible first capital of the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. The state was founded by Lit ...

. It flows through a swampy region and no important archaeological findings have been discovered on its banks. As the river flows in the lowlands and easily spills over its banks, most linguists agree that Lithuania's name (Lietuva) is related, and perhaps derived from Lithuanian verb ''lieti'' (to spill), of the root derived from the Proto-Indo-European *''leyǝ-''. Indo-European Etymology
/ref> Since many names in

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

are derived from

hydronym A hydronym (from el, ὕδρω, , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As ...

s, scientists had been looking for a body of water matching the

name of Lithuania The first known record of the name of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuva) is in a 9 March 1009 story of Saint Bruno recorded in the Quedlinburg Chronicle ( la, Annales Quedlinburgenses). The Chronicle recorded a Latinized form of the Old Church Slavonic wo ...

, ''Lietuva''. Kazys Kuzavinis identified Lietauka as a possible candidate and popularized the hypothesis. The original name of Lietauka must have been ''Lietava'', which was Slavicised by Old Believers expelled from the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

and established on the banks of the river, as ''Litavka'', and phonetically reversed to Lithuanian as ''Lietauka'' by local Lithuanians.

References

Rivers of Lithuania History of the Lithuanian language {{Lithuania-river-stub

See also

References