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Concept
Lake Ladoga
Summary
Lake Ladoga ('laed@g@; Ladozhskoye ozero, ˈladəʂskəjə ˈozjɪrə or Ladoga, ˈladəɡə; Laatokka [earlier in Finnish Nevajärvi]; Luadogu; Ladog, Ladoganjärv) is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg.
It is the largest lake located entirely in Europe, the second largest lake after Baikal in Russia, and the 14th largest freshwater lake by area in the world. It is comparable in size to Lake Ontario. Ladoga Lacus, a methane lake on Saturn's moon Titan, is named after the lake.
In one of Nestor's chronicles from the 12th century a lake called "the Great Nevo" is mentioned, a clear link to the Neva River and possibly further to Finnish nevo 'sea' or neva 'bog, quagmire'.
Ancient Norse sagas and Hanseatic treaties both mention a city made of lakes named Old Norse Aldeigja or Aldoga. Since the beginning of the 14th century this hydronym was commonly known as Ladoga. According to T. N. Jackson, it can be taken "almost for granted that the name of Ladoga first referred to the river, then the city, and only then the lake". Therefore, he considers the primary hydronym Ladoga to originate in the eponymous inflow to the lower reaches of the Volkhov River whose early Finnic name was Alodejoki (corresponding to modern Alojen joki) 'river of the lowlands'.
The Germanic toponym (Aldeigja ~ Aldoga) was soon borrowed by the Slavic population and transformed by means of the Old East Slavic metathesis ald- → lad- to Ладога. The Old Norse intermediary word between Finnish and Old East Slavic word is fully supported by archeology, since the Scandinavians first appeared in Ladoga in the early 750s, that is, a couple of decades before the Slavs.
Other hypotheses about the origin of the name derive it from aalto 'wave' and aaltokas 'wavy', or from the Russian dialectal word алодь, meaning 'open lake, extensive water field'. Eugene Helimski by contrast, offers an etymology rooted in German.
Official source
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