Leningrad Oblast of two great lakes of the European Part of Russia, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. Its northeastern part, between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, occupies the Karelian Isthmus. Some islands in the Gulf of Finland (including Kotlin, on which the city of Kronstadt has been built) and Lake Ladoga (including Konevets) also belong to the oblast. Much of the area of the oblast belongs to the drainage basin of the Neva, which is the only outflow of Lake Ladoga. Whereas the Neva, which flows to the Gulf of Finland (the city of Saint Petersburg is located in its
Lake Ladoga The Germanic toponym (Aldeigja → Aldoga) was soon borrowed by the Slavic population and transformed by means of the Old Russian metathesis "ald- → lad-" to . The Old Norse intermediary word between Finnish and Old Russian word is fully supported by archeology, since the Scandinavians first appeared in Ladoga in the early 750s, that is, a couple of decades before the Slavs. Other theories about the origin of the name derive it from "wave" and "wavy"; or from the Russian dialectal word алодь, meaning "open lake, extensive water field". Eugene Helimski by contrast, offers an etymology rooted in German.