Blood: from the Battle of Blood River, where 600 voortrekkers fought off 20,000 attacking Zulu troops. No voortrekkers were killed, but the dead Zulus (3,000 died) stained the nearby river with blood, and so the name stayed.
Pearl River: from Chinese 珠江 (Mandarin: Zhu Jiang; Cantonese: Zyü Gong) named after a sandy or stony island in the middle of the river called "Sea Pearl" (now reduced to a bank in the river)
Athabasca: From the Woods Cree word aðapaskāw, "[where] there are plants one after another".[11]
Bow: After the reeds growing along its banks, which were used by the local Indians to make bows.
Brazos: From the Spanish Los Brazos de Dios, or "the arms of God". There are several different explanations for the name, all involving it being the first water to be found by desperately thirsty parties.
Canadian River: The etymology is unclear. The name may have come from French-Canadian traders and hunters who traveled along the river, or early explorers may have thought that the river flowed into Canada.
Saskatchewan: From the Cree term Cree kisiskāciwani-sīpiy, meaning "swift flowing river".
Schuylkill: from the Dutchschuil and kil, meaning "hidden river".
Snake River: Derived from an S-shaped gesture the Shoshone made with their hands to represent swimming salmon. Explorers misinterpreted it to represent a snake, giving the river its present-day name.[21]
Susquehanna: Named after the Susquehannock Indians, whose name derives from an Algonquian word meaning "people at the falls", "roily water people",[22] or "muddy current".[23]
Orinoco: derived from the Warao term for "a place to paddle", itself derived from the terms güiri ("paddle") and noko ("place") i.e. a navigable place.[38]
^"Historia". Museo de Sitio Castillo de Niebla (in Spanish). Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 1 April 2021.
Bright, William (2004). Native American Place Names of the United States. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Blažek, Václav, and Ondřej Šefčík. "Oronyms Derived from Water? Mons Abnobae and Haraitī". Historische Sprachforschung [Historical Linguistics] 124 (2011): 239–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41553574.
Hamp, Eric P. ""Water" in Italic and Keltic". In: Etudes Celtiques, vol. 12, fascicule 2, 1970. pp. 547–550. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/ecelt.1970.1436 ; www.persee.fr/doc/ecelt_0373-1928_1970_num_12_2_1436