Argeş River

From World travel guide

Argeş (Template:Lang-hu) is a river of Southern Romania. It starts at the junction of headwaters Buda and Capra in the Făgăraş Mountains, in the Southern Carpathians and flows into the Danube at Olteniţa.

The main city on the Argeş is Piteşti. Upstream, it is retained by the Vidraru Dam, which has created Lake Vidraru.

1 Name
2 Localities
3 Tributaries
4 References
5 Further reading

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Name

The river is believed to be the same as Ordessus, a name mentioned by Ancient Greek historian Herodotus.<ref>George Ioan Brătianu, Une énigme et un miracle historique: le peuple roumain, Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucharest, 1989, p.138</ref> The etymology of Argeş is not clear. Traditionally, it was considered that it's derived from the ancient name, through a reconstructed term, Argessis. The capital of Dacian leader Burebista was named Argedava, but it appears that it has no link with the name for the river.<ref name=Madgearu>Alexandru Madgearu, "Români şi pecenegi în sudul Transilvaniei", in Zeno-Karl Pinter, Ioan-Marian Ţiplic, Maria-Emilia Ţiplic (eds.), Relaţii interetnice în Transilvania, Sec. VI-XIII, Editura Economică, Bucharest, p.117. ISBN 973-709-158-2</ref>

An alternate etymology derives the name of the river from a Pecheneg word, transliterated into Romanian as argiş (meaning "higher ground"). The earliest recorded variants of the name, referring to the city of Curtea de Argeş (lit. "The Court on the Argeş"), also suggest a derivation from this word: Argyas (1369), Argies (1379), Arghiş (1427), the river probably taking the name of the city.<ref name=Madgearu/>

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