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
Commissions of the Danube River and the Dardanelles. Of course the acceptance of this proposal would have meant the end of effective control of the Danube, for the Commission, far from the mouths of the Danube and charged with new tasks, would have hardly been able to fulfill its primary tasks, and the actual control of the Lower Danube would have devolved upon Rumania. wrote Joseph D. Somogyi in 1948. In 1924, Romania suggested that the activities of the commission be limited; that country would be charged with trial and punishment of shipping violators, similar to the method used by the newer, upriver International Danube