Can you name the rivers below from their names in local languages?

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Exonymous Rivers Quiz

Rating:	Report a mistake
Created by: davidr -
Published: March 31st, 2009
Category: Geography
Plays: 40,167

Tags: local, endonym, exonym, english, river, eponymous

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	aerodynamic:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 04:58 GMT	3 points
	the longest rivers quiz didn't help all that much for this one... I'll admit I haven't heard of two or three of these... okay four.

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	sevorak:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 05:31 GMT	20 points
	@estefania: Yep, and a White Nile. They converge in Khartoum, Sudan and become THE Nile.

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	Heef:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 07:15 GMT	10 points
	Not too bad. I got a couple early on, and then had a great idea to have a guess with. Sadly, my spelling failed me. One of my first attempts was sadly "Yahtzee". Ah well, I can look back and laugh!

	davidr:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 07:53 GMT	2 points
	@Zala G.: The Ganges is known in most Indian languages as the Ganga. I suppose I could have included it.

	davidr:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 07:53 GMT	5 points
	@Marc Tower: Use the feedback link at the bottom of the page to suggest something better, then.

	Havok3595:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 09:18 GMT	1 point
	For some reason, I was obsessed with thinking the Chang Jiang was the upper Mekong. I eventually got it right, but I couldn't stop thinking it.

	JAJDH:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 10:30 GMT	8 points
	@ Marc Tower: Did you SEE the 80's Video Games quiz?! It's just you, buddy.

	shel99:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 10:55 GMT	6 points
	I didn't even try Yangtze because I assumed that it wasn't an English name...

	Havok3595:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 11:32 GMT	9 points
	The Yangtze's a strange duck in that while it isn't an English name, it's not its official name in China anymore. I believe Yangtze's the Cantonese, and Chang Jiang the Mandarin of the same words, and the PRC's policy of using only Mandarin officially has worked pretty well.

	melissa:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 12:07 GMT	19 points
	Tough crowd! I thought this was a decent little quiz - I like the ones that draw on both linguistic and geographic knowledge. Most can be deduced either by noticing similarities between the local & English names OR by figuring out where the river's likely to be based on the local language. I'll admit I've never heard of the Orange River, but now I know about it - and the main reason I come on here is to learn. Thanks davidr.

	sub:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 12:49 GMT	7 points
	The Danube has its longest portion along the border with Romania, but I'm surprised to see that the Romanian version of the name is not listed (Dunăre, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube)

	zalagreensbury:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 13:59 GMT	-3 points
	Ah, that's not my point, all I was saying why didn't they have the Ganges river on the list as well, it's famous...but I guess not some people.

	davidr:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 15:03 GMT	7 points
	@sub: I'd overlooked that. I've asked the admins to add it.

	davidr:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 15:06 GMT	5 points
	@Zala G.: "They" (which is to say, I) have heard of the Ganges, thank you very much, but "they" didn't include it because the local name is so similar to the English name. The river is even sometimes called the Ganga in English.

	Uhlan:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 15:26 GMT	-1 points
	Damn, tried the white, upper, lower and south Nile to no avail.

	lil_lemur:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 16:08 GMT	5 points
	rivers and their 'local' names is all well and good (quite an interesting little quiz actually), but when are we going to get the 'b' quiz and the rest of the alphabet to follow on from the great 'a' quiz of 2 weeks ago?

	Annie:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 19:57 GMT	1 point
	I would have expected exonymous seas to come first, but fun quiz, davidr!

	Dinos1:	Mar 31st, 2009 at 22:16 GMT	3 points
	At Brian: Could have really used you on the pub quiz machine tonight. The very question where do the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet, came up and we guessed Cairo :(

	SillyStokey92:	Apr 1st, 2009 at 00:55 GMT	-3 points
	I got 7. Pure guesses.

	TIMTEBOW15:	Apr 1st, 2009 at 01:09 GMT	-2 points
	Mississippi as a bonus

	zalagreensbury:	Apr 1st, 2009 at 01:20 GMT	1 point
	yeah, cause who'd ever suspect 'an-Nil' of being anything else but the Nile...just saying.

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	davidr:	Apr 2nd, 2009 at 14:08 GMT	3 points
	@chilliothe: Nope. The Po is `Po' in Italian and the Volga is `Volga' in Russian (though I suppose I could have included it in Cyrillic — Волга). Likewise, the great rivers of South America have the same name in English as in Spanish/Portuguese.

	AtomicIce:	Apr 3rd, 2009 at 03:56 GMT	1 point
	@davidr, if there is an Exonymous Rivers II, Volga in Cyrillic would be a great entry. I liked this quiz, challenging, not too easy, not too hard.

	davidr:	Apr 3rd, 2009 at 08:05 GMT	6 points
	@AtomicIce: There probably won't be a version II, since it was hard enough compiling version I!

	GeoExpert:	May 24th, 2009 at 22:19 GMT	3 points
	The reason this was tough for davidr is 1)finding the data and 2)many of these use different alphabets, so it must have been confusing translating it into the english alphabet while not translating it into english

	the_luggage:	May 28th, 2009 at 12:50 GMT	-3 points
	"Can you name the rivers below from their names in local languages?" No. lol

	snowman888:	Sep 19th, 2009 at 12:55 GMT	-1 points
	I got all of them! Pearl, Tiber, Tigris, Euphrates, Blue Nile, Orange...... So fun!

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	PurppuraSuihku:	Nov 15th, 2009 at 03:07 GMT	1 point
	****, I tried White Nile and the rarely heard-of Red Nile.... other than that, pretty pleased with my 9/14.

	BiloxiSean:	Mar 4th, 2010 at 05:26 GMT	0 points
	How about Ole Man = Mississippi

	lindito:	May 21st, 2010 at 15:06 GMT	1 point
	i got them all... i guessed pearl for no reason at all. got orange because i live in south africa [and no other reason], and sounded out wisla until vistula came out of my mouth. the line through the l is what sealed the deal for me.

	samcash13593:	Dec 28th, 2010 at 19:11 GMT	1 point
	i feel stupid for missing the blue nile when it actually has the name for the nile in the name. It also shows how eurocentric my knowledge is- i got all the european onces, but hardly any of the others.

	moley:	Jan 11th, 2011 at 21:09 GMT	0 points
	Loved this one. I got nine which I thought was bad so I was pleasantly surprised when I found that put me in the 93rd percentile!