For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages, and texts about the languages, to gather knowledge about how words were used at earlier stages, and when they entered the languages in question. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots have been found which can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European language family.
Onomastics or onomatology is the branch of linguistics which studies proper names of all kinds, their origins, evolution and functioning. The word is Greek: ὀνοματολογία (from ὄνομα (ónoma) "name").
Onomastics, in accordance with proper names categories, has a number of branches, and hydronymy is among them.
A hydronym (from Greek: ὕδωρ, hydor, "water" and ὄνομα, onoma, "name") is a proper name of a body of water. Hydronymy is the study of hydronyms and of how bodies of water receive their names and how they are transmitted through history. It can be applied to rivers, lakes, and even oceanic elements.
Like most toponyms, as linguistic items, hydronyms are very conservative, with successor peoples often retaining the name given a body of water. For example, Mississippi has passed from Native Americans to contemporary Americans (and then to other languages). Often a given body of water will have several entirely different names given to it by different peoples. For example, Vltava and Moldau are the Czech and German names, respectively, for the same river in central Europe.
Hydronyms from various languages can all share a common etymon. For example, The Danube, Don, Dniester, Dnieper and Donets rivers all contain the Scythian name for "river" (cf. don, "river, water" in modern Ossetic).
Hydronyms are distinguished by water body type, they are divided into:
Oceanonims (the oceans names);
Pelagonyms (the sees names);
Potamonyms (the rivers names);
Limnonyms (the lakes names);
Gelonyms (the swamps names).
1. The peculiarity of hydronyms studying
2. The notion of substratum
3. The oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy
4. Ancestors of the present-day Europeans within the limits of time
5. The analysis of Verkhny Dniester Riever basin hydronymy
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