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By SUSAN FARLOW

Special to the Maine Sunday Telegram

Let’s say you’re taking a river cruise. Would you know whether the river was masculine or feminine? Would you even know that rivers have genders?

I sure didn’t.

So, on the first night of my excursion, cruise manager Mirela Varga caught me by surprise when she said, “The Rhine River is known as Father Rhine. The Moselle River is his daughter.”

What did this mean?

The German ship captain later explained that our cruise was beginning on the Rhine, considered a masculine river, then would branch off onto the Moselle, deemed a female one.

Before long, I started wondering about the genders of rivers, worldwide. I would end up searching for answers from all sorts of experts, from geographers and cruise guide authors to linguists and a legendary river explorer. I’d get swept up in research that was complex and sometimes contradictory. And always fascinating.

As for the Rhine, it showed itself as a muscular guy when I boarded the ship in Basel, Switzerland, where swimmers were getting giddyup rides down the swift currents. Not surprisingly, the term Rhine comes from the Celtic word “renos” meaning “raging flow.”

So are there any basic rules for determining gender?

“Whether a river is known as a he or she depends on its behavior,” notes veteran cruise writer Douglas Ward in his annual Complete Guide to Cruising & Cruise Ships. For example, says the British author, “the Rhone (in Switzerland and France) is almost always called ‘he’ because the waters can be turbulent, bothersome and rough,” whereas the Saone (in France) “is a gentler kind of river — more beautiful, more tranquil — and is thus referred to as ‘she.’“

By the time my cruise had reached the Upper Middle Rhine region in Germany, considered the most scenic part of the river and a UNESCO World Heritage site, the water was calm as a lake. But this section has a reputation.

In days of yore, before modern navigation devices, the narrow section near St. Goarshausen was one of the Rhine’s most dangerous, boasting tricky whirlpools and hazardous reefs. Sailors often crashed here. Inspired by these tragedies, German writers penned various legends about a beautiful temptress, Lorelei, whose mesmerizing song distracted boatmen, sending them to their deaths.

I could see the fabled Lorelei Rock, where the siren is said to sit, high above the river.

But the Rhine is also considered masculine because it deters invaders. It is a “brother in arms,” I was told by Hans Timmer, a Dutch cruise manager with Uniworld River Cruises. Moreover, it is “a fatherly river (to the Germans) because it protects and is an ally, because it is a formidable obstacle to cross and a strong line of defense.”

As my research unfolded, I learned that the concept of rivers and genders can get very complicated. For example, a single river can be sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine, depending on the country and language. This is the case with the Danube, says Theres Rinner of the Danube Tourist Commission, based in Vienna.

She continues: Whether some rivers are female or male “strongly depends on their history — frequently those rivers’ names reach far back into history, which makes it hard to track down the exact origin.”

Around the half-way point in my cruise, the ship left the Rhine and entered the Moselle River at the 2,000 year-old German town of Koblenz.

According to a book I picked up during a cruise stop, the Moselle has been considered a feminine tributary at least since the 4th century, when Roman poet Ausonius called the slim, winding, slow-moving waterway “the most-favored daughter of the Rhine.”

Even the wines from the Rhine and Moselle seem to reflect this male vs. female gender difference, according to Kirk Wille, an importer affiliated with Dr. Loosen Wines, an award-winning winery along the Moselle. In an email interview, he said, ” Rhine wines, Riesling in particular, are more full-bodied and hearty. Moselle Rieslings are very fine and delicate.”

If anyone knows about the souls of rivers, it’s Richard Bangs, an American explorer of the world’s rivers who has written 19 books, a score of documentaries and more than 1,000 magazine articles.

When I contacted Bangs, he replied by email that he was in Bosnia, rafting the “female” Una River. So why is the Una “female”? Because, says Bangs, “it is mostly a lovely, winding, sensual stream.”

Often called the father of modern adventure travel, Bangs later wrote me, “Many (river) names are indeed attributed to gender, often because they remind the explorers or settlers of human characteristics attributed to a gender.”

Bangs went on: “Virtually all rivers were named by men. Very often, if a river is mighty, overpowering, dangerous, it is male,” such as the Tigres, named for the male tiger. On the other hand, “if it is gentle, curvaceous, easy on the eyes, it is often female.”

Take the case of the Mekong, “which means ‘mother of all rivers’ as it births and feeds many of the great and life-giving waters of China.”

But things aren’t always so simple. And Bangs noted, there are no hard-and-fast rules about river names and genders. Names “vary by culture, geography, history, discoverers and characteristics.” Moreover, he added, “many river names have no gender at all,” such as the mighty Nile, generally considered the world’s longest river, at 4,130 miles.

Bangs pointed out that rivers are usually named for reasons other than gender. Many took their names after their male discoverer, such as the Hudson, named for Henry Hudson.

Still, the next time you encounter a river, ask a local if the river is considered male or female. The answer just might provide a trapdoor into the culture, mythology and history of that waterway and region.

Susan Farlow is a freelance writer who lives in Orono.