Karašica (Drava)
River in Croatia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karašica is a river in eastern Croatia whose length, combined with its tributary Vučica is 150 kilometres (93 mi), and whose basin covers 2,347 square kilometres (906 sq mi).[1]
Karašica and Vučica rise in the mountain of Papuk and flow towards the northeast into a plain, where they meander in an eastward direction. Vučica discharges into Karašica between Valpovo and Ladimirevci and the river flows into the Drava north of Josipovac.
The length of the Karašica is a matter analyzed by geographers because of its ambiguity. The toponym Karašica is used for the river flow after the confluence of lower Voćinska rijeka and lower Branjinska rijeka, near Crnac, which is also modified with the nearby Voćin-Drava canal. However, using the natural river flow, the whole of Voćinska rijeka and its headwater Jovanovica is part of Karašica, which adds another 54.4 km (33.8 mi) to the length, for a total of 148.2 km (92.1 mi). This would earn this river the distinction of being the single longest river that is exclusively in Croatia.[2]
The origin of the name "Karašica"
Several etymologies have been proposed for the river name "Karašica".
Traditionally, two etymologies for the hydronym "Karašica" have gained significant traction among linguists. One is that "Karašica" comes from Turkic syntagma "kara sub" meaning "black water", from some unattested Turkic language which was spoken in Croatia in the Early Middle Ages. That etymology is supported by the Croatian etymologist Petar Skok and by the Hungarian etymologist Melich Janos.[3] Melich Janos'es main argument is that there have been several names for Karašica attested in medieval sources, and one of those names was Feketeviz, which means "black water" in Hungarian (so it makes sense to suppose that the name "Karašica" probably means the same thing). The second etymology which is widely cited for the name "Karašica" is that it somehow comes from the Latin fish name "carassius" (a name of several species of freshwater fish), perhaps being a relatively-recent borrowing into Croatian. That etymology is advocated by the Croatian linguist Dubravka Ivšić.[4]
Teo Samaržija proposes a third etymology, namely, that "Karašica" comes from Illyrian *Kurr-urr-issia (flow - water - suffix), borrowed into Proto-Slavic as *Kъrъrьsьja, changing to *Karrasja after the Havlík's law, then to *Karaša after the yod-coalescence and the loss of geminate consonants in Croatian, to which the Slavic suffix -ica was later added.[5] The main argument for there being a verb root *kurr in Illyrian meaning "to flow" is that similar river names (starting with the consonants 'k' and 'r') occur all across Croatia (Krka, Korana, Krbavica, Krapina, Kravarščica, two rivers named Karašica...), and that it can be estimated using the methods taught in the course Information Theory in the Computer Engineering curriculum (the method involving the Collision Entropy and Birthday Paradox) that the p-value of that pattern in the Croatian river names has to be somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17, so that it is probably a statistically significant pattern. Whether or not this is a valid way of reasoning is still a hotly debated issue among the Croatian etymologists and information theory experts.
