Editing Aller (Germany) (section)

== History ==

=== Meaning of the name ===
The river's name, which was recorded in 781 as ''Alera'', in 803 as ''Elera'', in 1096 as ''Alara'', has two possible derivations:

# A shortened form of ''*Eleraha'', where ''*Eler'' in [[Old German]] ''*olisa'' or [[Proto-Slavic language|Old Slavic]] ''olsa'' (Polish: ''olsza'') would mean ''Erle'' ("alder") and ''aha'' (pronounced in German: ''Acha'') is an old word frequently used in river names to mean "water" (cf. the [[Latin]] ''aqua''). The name of the tree passed into [[Low German]] as ''Eller'', which is very close to the word ''Aller''. ''Aller'' would therefore mean something like ''Erlenwasser'' i.e. "alder water", which was probably due to the river banks being largely covered in [[alder]] trees that prefer wet locations.
# In [[Hans Krahe]]'s system of Old European hydronomy, the old name for the Aller, ''Alara'', is an example of a group of river names with the root ''al-'', which is very common over much of Europe and according to Krahe all go back to the [[Proto-Indo-European language|Indo-European]] root ''*el-/*ol-'', which means "flowing". Similarly related would be rivers such as the [[Alster]], [[Iller]], [[Elz (disambiguation)|Elz]]<!--intentional link to DAB page--> and [[Ilmenau (river)|Ilmenau]]. Krahe's hypothesis is, however, hotly disputed in language circles. [[Theo Vennemann]] used a modified version of Krahe's model in his [[Vasconic substratum theory]].
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