The Rižana is a river in

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

. It has also been known as the Risano. It was known as the Formio in Latin.

Geography

The village of Rižana is located upon it. Its mouth is on or near the Gulf of Trieste of the

Adriatic Sea The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Se ...

. The Škocjan Lagoon Nature Reserve is a park area of wetlands where the Rižana and Badaševica rivers used to flow into the sea.

Name

The Rižana was attested in historical sources as ''Rusano'' 670, ''Riziano'' 804, ''Risano'' in 1135, and ''Garzignana'' in 1569, among other spellings. The origin of the name is pre-Slavic and is probably related to the Illyrian toponym Ῥιζάνα ''Rhizana'', reflected in the Montenegrin toponym '' Risan''. The name is probably derived from the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

root ''*erei̯H-'' 'to flow'.

Geography

Name

References

Further reading