Editing Donets (section)

==Etymology==
The names ''Don'' and its diminutive ''Donets'' are derived from [[Iranic]], [[Sarmatian language|Sarmatian]] {{lang|xsc-Latn|Dānu}} "the river".<ref name="Mallory, J.P 2000. p. 106">Mallory, J.P. and Victor H. Mair.  ''The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West''.  London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. p. 106</ref><ref>[http://i.ironau.ru/pdf/osjazfolk1949.pdf Абаев В. И. Осетинский язык и фольклор (Ossetian language and folklore). Moscow:  Publishing house of Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1949. P. 236]</ref>  Scytho-Sarmatians inhabited the areas to the north of the [[Black Sea]] from 1100 BC into the early medieval times.

In the 2nd century CE [[Ptolemy]] knew the river Don, into which the Donets flows, as ''Tanais'',<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qh7nDfGm7BkC&pg=PA71 |page=71 |title=The story of maps |author=Brown, Lloyd Arnold |publisher=Courier Dover Publications |isbn=0-486-23873-3 |year=1979}}</ref> and Western Europeans recognized that the Don had a significant tributary which they called either the small Tanais or ''Donetz''.<ref>{{cite book | url = https://archive.org/details/geographysystem00renngoog | page = [https://archive.org/details/geographysystem00renngoog/page/n114 76] | title = The geography system of Herodotus examined and explained, by a comparison with those of other ancient authors, and with modern geography  |author = Rennell, James | year = 1830 | publisher = C.J.G. & F. Rivington}}</ref> The Slavic name of ''Seversky Donets'' derived from the fact that the river originates from the land of [[Severians]]<!-- ("Sever" is "North" in Russian) [this is true but etymologically irrelevant]-->. As the Italian-Polish chronicler [[Alexander Guagnini]] (1538–1614) wrote: "There is also another, small Tanais, which originates in the Seversky Principality (for this reason it is called Donets Seversky) and flows into the large Tanais above [[Azov]]".<ref>Guagnini, Alexander  
[http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/rus5/Gwagnini/frametext1.htm ''Description of Muscovy'']. 1997 reprint (in Russian): Есть также другой, малый Танаис, который берёт своё начало в Северском княжестве (поэтому он называется Донец Северский) и выше Азова впадает в большой Танаис.
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