Month: June 2025

One of the most interesting qualities of the Swiss is that they are reserved: not necessarily shy or introverted, just deeply reluctant to do anything that would make themselves stand out.

Perhaps that’s why, in a country with dozens of rivers, they’ve decided to name most of them . . . the Aare!

The Aare starts as glacier meltwater near Grimsel Pass, then twists, turns, dives through lakes, splits into canals, merges again. And everywhere it goes, it’s still called the Aare.

In any other country, if a river split, one fork might keep the name while the others get new ones. But not here. In Switzerland, nobody wants to stick their neck out and declare, “I shall now rename this offshoot the… Neo-Aare.”

Nope. Just like its quieter cousin, the Reuss, the Aare is composed of various rivers, ditches, canals, and flows . . .  all politely calling themselves . . . the Aare.

While the Swiss politely avoid drawing attention to themselves by naming every river “Aare” and quietly pretending forks don’t exist, the Bavarians took a very different approach, most likely with some Slavic encouragement.

In Bavaria, no river escapes without a unique identity: The Regnitz, Pegnitz, Rotnitz, Pulsnitz. Each and every puddle gets its own title and backstory. That’s the Slavic influence for you: “nitz” everywhere, like the ancient Slavs looked at a stream and thought, “You’re special, little puddle. You deserve your own name.”

Meanwhile, the Swiss were still debating whether it was too forward to label their water at all.