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'.
References
Further reading
*
Rivers of the Slovene Littoral
{{Slovenia-geo-stub