Neris

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Neris
Mindaugas bridge over Neris in Vilnius, Lithuania
Origin	Belarus
Mouth	Neman River
Basin countries	Belarus, Lithuania
Length	510 km (317 mi)
Source elevation
Avg. discharge	182 m³/s (6,428 ft³/s)
Basin area	25,100 km² (9,691 mi²)

Neris (pronunciation (help·info), Belarusian: Вя́льля, Vialla, or Ві́лія) is a river arising in Belarus, flowing through Vilnius (Lithuania) and becoming a tributary of the Neman River (Nemunas) at Kaunas (Lithuania). Its length is 510 km.

The Neris connects two old Lithuanian capitals - Kernavė and Vilnius. Along its banks are burial places of the pagan Lithuanians. 25 km from Vilnius are the old burial mounds of Karamzynai. There also are many mythological stones, and a sacred oak.

Etymologically, the name is one of a class of water names, including Lithuanian Narotis, Narasa (rivers), Narutis (lake), Old Prussian Narus (the Narew), the Nara (near Moscow) and many others over the prehistoric Baltic range. These are related to Lithuanian narus, "deep", and nerti, "to dive". More remote connections are obscure, although the root is believed to be Indo-European. There are a number of possibilities; perhaps Pokorny's 2nd *ner-, "under" (Indogermanisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch, pp765-766), perhaps Derksen's *nerH-, o-grade *norH- (Slavic Inherited Lexicon), perhaps a relation to the Greek god Nereus, which may be from *snau-, "to give milk to", in the sense of "flow" (Partridge, Origins (1983)).