River Names as Cultural Mirrors: a Cognitive-Linguistic Analysis of British and Uzbek Hydronyms

River names, or hydronyms, represent one of the most stable and conservative elements of language, preserving ancient linguistic strata, settlement patterns, and cultural worldviews across millennia. As fundamental geographical features that sustain life and define boundaries, rivers retain names that often outlast the civilizations that created them, functioning as linguistic fossils embedded in the landscape. This study presents a comparative cognitive-linguistic analysis of hydronyms in Great Britain and Uzbekistan, two geographically and culturally distant regions, to investigate how river names serve as cultural mirrors reflecting distinct historical trajectories and environmental realities. The research employs a qualitative, comparative-descriptive methodology, analyzing etymological and historical data to examine linguistic origins, semantic motivations, and socio-cultural functions of major river names in both regions. The analysis reveals that while British and Uzbek hydronyms share universal cognitive naming principles—particularly descriptive naming based on salient physical features—they diverge significantly in their cultural content and environmental priorities. British river names predominantly derive from ancient Celtic and pre-Celtic Indo-European roots, emphasizing aesthetic qualities such as color and flow, and frequently referencing pre-Christian deities. Uzbek hydronyms, shaped by Persian and Turkic influences, reflect the paramount economic importance of water in an arid landscape, the legacy of Silk Road civilizations, and the role of rivers as arbiters of imperial history. The study demonstrates that hydronymic analysis provides a powerful methodological tool for accessing deep cultural memory, revealing how environmental context fundamentally shapes the cognitive frameworks through which societies perceive and name their natural world.