Note 3 — Chapter I

Etymologists have squabbled as much over the name of the Danube, as geographers over its source, which some contend to be near the village of St. George, and others in the court-yard of the palace of the Prince of Fürstenberg, at Donaueschingen. This mighty flood, the grandest in Europe, and the third in consequence in the Old World, was known to the Romans by the double name of the Danube, and the Ister. “Ortus hic in Germaniæ jugis montes abnobae ex adverso Raurici Galliæ oppidi multis ultra alpes millibus, ac per innumeras lapsus gentes Danubii nomine, immenso aquarum auctu et unde primum Illyricum alluit Ister appellatus, sexaginta amnibus receptis, medio ferme numero eorum navigabili, in Pontum vastis sex fluminibus evolvitur.”—‘Plin. Nat. Hist.’ iv. 24. The ancient Germans named it Döne and Tona; the Sclavonians, Donava. The Hungarians call it Tanara, or Donara, and the Turks, Duna. Its modern German appellation is Donau. Some of the earlier writers would derive this name from Deus Abnobius, or Diana Abonbia, or Abnopa, to whom a temple was dedicated near the source of the river. Others deduce it from Thon, clay, and contend it should be written Thonau. Others again would find its origin in the words Ton, sound, or Donner, thunder; and Reichard, indeed, gives the latter as the received derivation. Breuninger, however, proposes Tanne, a fir, and speciously enough, the river rising in the Schwarz-wald, of which fir is the distinctive character, and its banks being clothed with forests of the same tree, along nearly the whole of its course; while Nikolai would have us seek it in the Keltic words Do, Na, which signify two rivers, and may either apply to its double name, “Binominem Istrum,” or to the two sources which dispute the glory of its birth.