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Neris
Žirmūnai Bridge over Neris in Vilnius, Lithuania
Origin	Belarus
Mouth	Neman River
Basin countries	Belarus, Lithuania
Length	510 km (317 mi)
Source elevation
Avg. discharge	182 m³/s (6,428 ft³/s)
Basin area	25,100 km² (9,691 mi²)

Neris (pronunciation (help·info), Belarusian: Вя́льля, Vialla, or Ві́лія) is a river arising in Belarus, flowing through Vilnius (Lithuania) and becoming a tributary of the Neman River (Nemunas) at Kaunas (Lithuania). Its length is 510 km.

275 km of ti runs trough Belarus thats were its is called Vilija and 235 km running trough Lithuania and thats were its called Neris.

The Neris connects two old Lithuanian capitals - Kernavė and Vilnius. Along its banks are burial places of the pagan Lithuanians. 25 km from Vilnius are the old burial mounds of Karmazinai. There also are many mythological stones, and a sacred oak.

Neris is the primeval name of the river, while name Vilija (Vialla) is of a secondary extraction, which formed in Slavic languages from word Velija (meaning big). Primeval name Neris also remain and in the riverside names like Paneriai. The name Neris is of Baltic origin, from Lithuanian nerti meaning to dive, swim downstream; likely name had more general meaning of flow in early times.^[1]

Etymologically, the name is one of a class of water names, including Lithuanian Narotis, Narasa (rivers), Narutis (lake), Old Prussian Narus (the Narew), the Nara (near Moscow) and many others over the prehistoric Baltic range. These are related to Lithuanian narus, "deep", and nerti, "to dive". More remote connections are obscure, although the root is believed to be Indo-European. There are a number of possibilities; perhaps Pokorny's 2nd *ner-, "under" (Indogermanisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch, pp765-766), perhaps Derksen's *nerH-, o-grade *norH- (Slavic Inherited Lexicon), perhaps a relation to the Greek god Nereus, which may be from *snau-, "to give milk to", in the sense of "flow" (Partridge, Origins (1983)).

• Neris regional park

Mindaugas Bridge over Neris in Vilnius

Valakupiai Bridge over Neris in Vilnius

Confluence of Neris and Neman in Kaunas

Neris in Pajauta valley in Kernavė

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