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[edit] Darya, river or sea

In my language Persian, Darya means Sea. If anyone want to revert it back to "River", please discuss it here first. Thank you.

[edit] Etymology of Oxus

Various etymologies have been suggested for the name "Oxos" (or preciously, Ôxus, Ωξος)

I suppose that:

The the root "Uks-", is derivated by name "S-akas" (i.e. Sacae, Sacians, or else Scythians).

The same root occurs in words:

1. "Ukrayina" ( i.e. Ok(s)-raine)( = Ukraine, the modern European state)
2. "Iaxartes" (i.e. Oks-arta) ( = Syr Darya, ancient river, in Central Asia)
3. "Euxinus Pontus" (i.e. Oks-inus pontus) ( = the modern Black Sea) etc.

--IonnKorr 08:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment on the described direction of flow

The Amu Darya page currently says:

"One source of the Amu Darya is the Pamir River, which emerges from Lake Zorkul/Victoria, flowing east until Ishtragh, where it turns north and then east north-west through the Hindu Kush as the Panj"

That appears to be incorrect. The Pamir River, to my eye, appears to emerge from Lake Zorkul/Victoria/Sari Kul, heading more or less south-west until it gets to Ishtragh, then curves north, eventually makes more or less a U-turn and then proceeds south before turning around again and heads north-west, mostly, to the Aral Sea. The current description seems to be almost 180 degrees out of phase for the early stages.

Also, for what it is worth, Google Earth seems to be using "Ucdrag" as the spelling for Ishtragh, for which a bunch of different spellings seem to have been used in English.

Further, I believe that from the confluence of the Pamir and the Wakhan rivers the combined river is called the Panj (with various spellings) and not just the Pamir anymore. Finally, there appears to be some semi-consensus that the true source of the Amu Darya is the Wakhan, not the Pamir.

The Wikipedia page on the Panj is similarly confusing to me, by the way, since that is, in fact, the name of the Amu Darya at this stage.

I have no expertise of any kind on this and I base the comment on the true source on some interested reading from hundred-plus year old writing by Curzon, 50-plus year old writing by Tillman and other such material I have poked around in. I leave it to someone better informed to do something with this. This is one of the world's great rivers. I presume there is a lot of expertise floating around.

71.167.49.186 01:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC) Shankar