On the Rura

Here is a map of the rivers Lippe (Lippa in the Ravenna Cosmography but earlier in Roman sources Lupia) (in the north) and Ruhr (in the south) noting Soest and Paderborn (Bor? Brn?) from our prior post plus adding in blue the location of Kamen as well as of Cracow (no longer present but see here or here for old maps).

But why add the Ruhr? The German word may have been Rohr meaning “tube”.  The Slavic word for a “pipe” is “rura” and the name of this river in Slavic is, to this day, Rura. Now, to add an overlay to this, in Latin “rus” means countryside/village – e.g., rustic.  And, of course, the word rural has the same connotation.  Consequently, it is rather difficult to tell what came from what. and how.

What is interesting however is that a 13th century history of a monastery at Waldsassen (Fundatio Monasterii Waldsassensis) says this:

“There is a stream in parts of Westphallia that is commonly called the Southern or Slavic Rura.”

“Quidam torrens est in partibus Westfalle, qui vulgariter Rura Australis seu Slavica nuncupatur.”

Waldsassen Abbey – what secrets does its library contain?

Now, Waldsassen Abbey is on today’s border with the Czech lands so the inhabitants would have known what a Slav is.

Moreover, the name of the river was first recorded as Rura (in 796 as per Hans Krahe – see his “Unsere ältesten Flussnamen”).  One does not need to have a doctorate to recognize that Slavic languages  typically produce an -a ending for a river.  The Germanic, on the other hand, do not.  The reason for this seems rather simple – that is in Germanic (to the extent a version of Germanic preserves articles) the name Fluss is masculine.  In Slavic, reka/rzeka is feminine.  Thus we have Wisla (but Weichsel), Odra (but Oder), Nysa (but Neisse), Lipa (but Lippe), Wezera (but Weser), Tamiza (but Thames) and so forth and so on.  And this is true for Rura (or maybe Vira as per below) (but Rohr, Roehre, Ruhr).  We know the name Rura in that form is not Germanic but maybe it’s Celtic?     (And was there a northern Rura?  In the Netherlands perhaps? Check out Dutch river names.)

But then why would it be called a Slavic Rura?  The only conceivable reason seems to be that there were Slavs somewhere in the neighborhood of the Rura.  If the river name was Celtic then it must have gotten pretty crowded there by the Rura with all the Germans and Slavs coming in…

So when the Masurians settled in the Ruhr in the 19th century, could it be said that they were just coming home? A kind of a silent “Wiedereroberung”?

Surely, there must be an explanation that makes sense?  Well, the choleric Aleksander Brueckner presented a very strong argument to dispel any notion of the Slavic nature of the river:

“I won’t even deign to guess, where this crazy combination [Slavic Rura] may have come from.”

And there you have it ladies & gents.

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