Danube once appears as the mother of Vrtra, "a dragon blocking the course of the rivers." The Finnish word for Danube is Tonava, which is most likely derived from the word for the river in Swedish and German, "Donau". Its Sámi name "Deatnu" means "Great River". It is possible that "dānu" in Scythian as in Avestan was a generic word for "river": "Dnieper" and "Dniestr", from "Danapris" and "Danastius", are presumed to continue Scythian "*dānu apara" "far river" and "*dānu nazdya-" "near river", respectively. The river was known to the ancient Greeks as the "Istros" (Ἴστρος) a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian
Danube Commission (1948) 11 international civil servants and 19 employees under the supervision of a director-general, who is at present Petar Margić from Croatia. The official languages of the commission are German, French and Russian. </div> "For predecessors to the present Danube Commission, see Commissions of the Danube River." As a result of the Danube River Conference of 1948, the river system was divided into three administrations — the regular River Commission (which had existed in one form or another since 1856), a bilateral Romania-USSR administration between Brăila and the mouth of the Sulina channel, and a bilateral Romania-Yugoslavia administration at the Iron