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 "Russian domination" in Southeastern Europe after the Crimean War, so the 1921 convention "stood for an effort to block the resurgence of German or Russian power." The European Commission, again ensconced in its quarters at Galatz, found things very bad indeed at the mouths of the Danube after the war. Silt had choked the channel again, and it seemed as though attempts to improve the situation was continually going awry. Economic affairs along the entire river were so bad that the League of Nations instituted in 1922 an inquiry by a special committee, headed by an American, Walker D. Hines