Saône

The Saône (soʊn , son; Sona; Arar) is a river in eastern France. It is a right tributary of the Rhône, rising at Vioménil in the Vosges department and joining the Rhône in Lyon, at the southern end of the Presqu'île. The name Saône derives from that of the Gallic river goddess Souconna, which has also been connected with a local Celtic tribe, the Sequanes. Monastic copyists progressively transformed Souconna to Saoconna, which ultimately gave rise to Saône. The other recorded ancient names for the river were Brigoulus and Arar. The Saône rises at Vioménil at the foot of the cliff of the Faucilles in the Vosges at an elevation of , and flows into the Rhône at Lyon at an elevation of . Its length is . Its largest tributary is the Doubs; upstream of receiving the Doubs at Verdun-sur-le-Doubs in Saône-et-Loire, the Saône is called the "Petite Saône" (lesser Saône), which reflects the large contribution of the Doubs to the Saône. In fact the Doubs' mean annual flow rate is slightly stronger than that of the Petite Saône, compared to ; some thus assert that it is in fact the Saône that flows into the Doubs. Nonetheless the Saône has a substantially larger watershed than the Doubs, at vs. . At the Saône has the largest watershed of any French river that does not flow directly into the sea, covering approximately 1/18 of metropolitan France. In pre-Roman times the river's name was "Arar", a doubling of the Indo-European root ar (water). According to Caesar's Gallic Wars this doubling reflected the idea that it was difficult to identify the direction of the river due to its slow rate of flow. Its current name came from a sacred spring, Sauc-Onna, located at Chalon, which was used by Roman legionaries to refer to the entire river. Vosges: Darney, Monthureux-sur-Saône, Châtillon-sur-Saône Haute-Saône: Jonvelle, Corre, Jussey, Port-sur-Saône, Scey-sur-Saône, Gray Côte-d'Or: Auxonne, Saint-Jean-de-Losne, Seurre Saône-et-Loire: Verdun-sur-le-Doubs, Chalon-sur-Saône, Tournus, Mâcon, Crêches-sur-Saône Rhône: Belleville-sur-Saône, Villefranche-sur-Saône, Anse, Neuville-sur-Saône, Fontaines-sur-Saône, Caluire-et-Cuire, Lyon Ain: Thoissey, Jassans-Riottier, R indicates a right tributary, L indicates a left tributary.