1978: Devil's Water and Eden River: Not Religious May 15, 2020

Generally, when people come across the words 'Devil' or 'Eden', this is expected to have some religious context, but in the case of both Devil's Water and Eden River in both close to the Scottish-English border, they have nothing to do with religion. Both words actually come from Celtic. The Devil's Water is actually related to the name 'Douglas', which is a surname from the area. This is understood to come from the Brittonic dūβ- ('black')—same as in ‘Dublin’—and glẹ:ss (stream). In the former case, as documented by the Romans this comes from the Celtic 'ituna' meaning 'rushing [water]'. In both cases, these modern names come from topographical descriptions, and not Biblical imagery.

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