Lietava, Lietauka or Letauka, is a rivulet in

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

that is believed to have given Lithuania its name. It is 11 km in length and flows into Neris 30 km away from Kernavė, a possible first capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 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 are derived from hydronyms, scientists had been looking for a body of water matching the name of Lithuania, ''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 Old Believers or Old Ritualists, ''starovery'' or ''staroobryadtsy'' are Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintain the liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Orthodox Church as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow bet ...

expelled from the Russian Empire 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