Neris

Neris
Žirmūnai Bridge over Neris in Vilnius, Lithuania
Origin	Belarus
Mouth	Neman River
Basin countries	Belarus, Lithuania
Length	510 km (320 mi)
Source elevation
Avg. discharge	182 m³/s (6,428 ft³/s)
Basin area	25,100 km2 (9,700 sq mi)

Neris River at Green Bridge, Vilnius.

Confluence of Viliya and Narach: a conjectured reason for the dual naming of Neris

Neris ( pronunciation (help·info), Belarusian: Ві́лія Viliya, Polish: Wilia) is a river rising in Belarus. It flows through Vilnius (Lithuania) and becomes a tributary of the Neman River (Nemunas) at Kaunas (Lithuania). Its length is 510 km (320 mi).

Confluence of Neman and Neris in Kaunas

For 276 km (171 mi)^[1] the river runs through Belarus, where it is called Viliya, and 235 km (146 mi) runs through Lithuania, where it is called Neris.

The Neris connects two old Lithuanian capitals - Kernavė and Vilnius. Along its banks are burial places of the pagan Lithuanians. At 25 km (16 mi) from Vilnius are the old burial mounds of Karmazinai, with many mythological stones and a sacred oak.

Dual naming

The reasons for the dual naming of the river as Neris by the Lithuanians and Viliya (formerly Velja, meaning "big, great" in Slavic) by the Slavs are complex. Even in Vilnius, there are toponyms including both names, e. g. Neris remains in the riverside names of Paneriai and Paneriškės while Velja is a part of the name Valakampiai, which means "an angle of Velja" in Lithuanian.^[2]

Although it has been suggested that Neris is the primeval name of the river, while name Viliya is of a secondary extraction,^[3] the dual naming most probably emerged from the confluence of rivers Neris (now known as Narach River, leaving Lake Narach) and Velja, in the historical Slavic/Baltic borderland, each ethnos choosing their own name for the river starting at the confluence.^[2] It is moreover evidenced by the fact that the name Neris was never used to name the river Velja up to this confluence. Therefore it has been proposed that the Narach River had in fact been considered the upper reaches of Neris by the Balts in ancient times.^[4]

Etymology of "Neris"

The name Neris is of Baltic origin, a cognate of the Lithuanian nerti generally meaning "to dive, swim downstream" as well as "to net, crochet". It is likely that the name had a more general meaning of "flow"^[3] or particularly "swift and swirling flow"^[5] in early times.

Etymologically, the name is one of a class of hydronyms, widespread in the modern and prehistoric Baltic ranges; e. g. Lithuanian Narotis, Narasa (rivers), Narutis (lake), Old Prussian Narus, Nara near Moscow. 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:

• Pokorny's 2nd *ner-, "under" (Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, pp765–766);
• Derksen's *nerH-, o-grade *norH- (Slavic Inherited Lexicon);

• A relation to the Greek god Nereus, which may be from *snau-, "to give milk to", in the sense of "flow" (Partridge, Origins (1983)).

Basin

Total watershed is 25,100 km² (9,700 sq mi), 10,920 km² (4,220 sq mi) of which with are in Belarus.^[1]

Basin within Belarus

The river is called Viliya in Belarus. There is the Belarus largest Vileyka Reservoir by Viliya, up off the Vileyka city.

Right tributaries

• Narach River
• Servach River

Left tributaries

• Iliya River
• Vusha River
• Oshmyanka River

Basin within Lithuania

The watershed within Lithuania is 13,849 km² (5,347 sq mi)^[6]

Tributaries

• Vilnia
• Vokė
• Bražuolė
• Dūkšta
• Musė
• Laukysta
• Lomena
• Lokys
• Šešuva
• Saidė

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Neris.

Coordinates: 54°54′01″N 23°52′27″E / 54.90028°N 23.87417°E / 54.90028; 23.87417