If we were to assume that an early ancestor was the source of the Don river names we would have to admit a profound influence. He certainly commanded tremendous respect.
 

But what kind of social order would know him over such wide areas? We normally consider that very ancient people were restricted to the immediate vicinity of their homes. We do not see them traveling or having commercial trade over wide regions. Until recently this view was held for people even of 3,000 years ago. Lately, as we accumulated more information, we came to recognize that widespread commercial traffic took place even in more remote times. If the names date from those olden days it means that common social mechanisms were present.
 

realities, or to other accumulated bodies of knowledge. But if one is receptive to the idea that Adam was real, that he must have had a profound influence, then this linguistic evidence begins to take on deeper meaning.

One could argue that the place names, even though demonstrating a pervasive influence, might, indeed, have derived from mythological folk tales and not from real persons. After all, it is the veneration that brings names into use, not the reality of the source. Adam is revered greatly today among Jews and Christians although they have no evidence other than the simple story in the Bible.
 

But what tradition would foster such respect? How did it come about? Why would it carry so strongly in phonetic similarity across geographical boundaries? The Greeks and Romans, intimately related in culture, did not use the same names for their mythological gods. Zeus and Hera were the Greek king and queen of the gods but the Roman names were Jupiter and Juno. It seems more reasonable to assume origin in a cultural commonality out of some reality which remembered the actual names, and not out of mere mythological invention.
 

Spanish men of high rank and nobility were addressed as Don. The title is used more commonly today as a matter of courtesy, but it was once restricted to a high class group as respect for their ruling authority. Don Juan, Don Carlos, and Don Quixote meant Lord Juan, Lord Carlos or Master Quixote. The title in Portugal is Dom with the n-to-m phonetic shift. In Sicily the title is still Don and came into the United States through the Sicilian underworld^RHDEL,OED.
 

The female form in Spain is Doña; in Portugal it is Dona; in Italy it is Donna. The female form in Portugal has not seen the n-to-m phonetic shift.
 

In ancient Rome Dominus meant Lord or Master, just as the Spanish Don meant Lord or Master. Through the Roman conquests of the Iberian peninsula linguists believe the Spanish Don and Portuguese Dom derive from the Latin Dominus. The Iberian female forms are thought to derive from the Latin female Domina. Numerous other words in Spanish and Portuguese can be traced without question to Latin; it is natural to assume the titles also came from Latin^RHDEL,OED.
 

The collegiate evidence is complicated by the title of Dean, as the Dean of a university or the Dean of a profession, someone expert in knowledge. The title is thought to derive from the French decanum and the Greek deka or decanos, someone who is the head of a group of ten. However, this supposed origin of the Dean title is far from clear. As admitted by the Oxford English Dictionary, "Whether viewed as Greek or Latin, the form of the word offers difficulties."
 

The vowel change from don to dean and the association with learned persons is not accidental. The various forms derive from a source that also explains the don and donna of the male and female, and the "a" prefix that changes don to adon. All are explicitly related, as we shall see. The Don title is not limited to Spain, Portugal or England. It is used in France in Benedictine and Carthusian monastic orders where it was interchangeable with the pronunciation Dom. In Italy Don is also used as a title of address for priests^RHDEL.
 

The same form can be traced through Europe for female applications, with the n-to-m phonetic shift. Dam or Dama was an ancient European title of a woman of high rank and nobility. We know the word today as Dame. We also use it more rarely as dam, the descriptive term for a female parent, both human and animal. It occurs also in the descriptive term for a young woman, a damsel. It is found in Madam, a combination of the maternal ma with dam, although traditional etymologies show it from the French ma+dam = "my dame"^RHDEL,OED.
 

Investigation of dom- and -dom prefixes and suffixes adds to our information on this phenomenon.
 

Examples of English words with a dom prefix which come from Latin are:

Domain from dominicus = "of or belonging to a Lord or Master."

Dominate from dominare = "to rule, govern, lord over something or someone."

Dominion from dominium = "property or ownership of a lord."
 

Now consider examples of the -dom suffix in the Teutonic languages. Christendom and kingdom imply rulership, authority, sovereignty, or a condition of state. The use of -dom to denote royal or kingly dominion, and the jurisdiction of an elder or lord, is illustrated also in Earldom or Dukedom. The -dom suffix also appears in such modern English words as freedom and wisdom, a condition or fact of being free and wise.
 

To show the antiquity of the don/dom forms I turn to Northwest Semitic and Hebrew. Abundant evidence shows that those languages long predate Rome and the Latin language, extending more than four thousand years into the past. If a don influence can be demonstrated in Hebrew it certainly did not come out of Rome.
 

Dan was a son of Jacob, a great-grandson of Abraham. He was the father of the Israelite tribe of Dan. In Hebrew his name is pronounced Don, with the same vowel intonation as the Spanish and English Dons. Literally it means "to judge," someone expert in knowledge and wisdom. Note how closely this literal meaning parallels that of the European usage in the ruling Dons and the wise professors.
 

Daniel, the famous character of the Hebrew apocalypse, also carries the name Don but with the suffix El. He is known to students of Near East antiquities as one famed for his expert knowledge and wisdom. Nebuchadnezzar called upon Daniel to solve the mysteries of his dreams; Daniel was promoted to high office because of his great intelligence and perspicacity. It seems hardly coincidental that the Hebrew Don and Daniel, denoting knowledge and wisdom, would have names phonetically similar to the European Dons who are also noted for their expert knowledge and wisdom.
 

Furthermore, Hebrew has the title Adon, which means Lord or Master. The close linguistic relationship between the European Don and the Hebrew Adon is clear. The phonetics and the meanings are the same. Even more, with an n-to-m phonetic shift Adon becomes Adom, and this is the Hebrew name for Adam. Thus we find a solid linguistic connection between Adam and the Dons of Europe. The close similarity in names, titles, and honorifics from Europe to the Near East Hebrew, in phonetics and semantics across widely divergent cultures, is impressive.
 

Even more, we cannot consider the social titles and honorifics in isolation from the Don river names. It is not reasonable to ignore the phonetic identity.
 

A suggestion that the titles came from the river names would be absurd; people do not acquire important social titles from the names for rivers. On the other hand the river names would not have come from the social titles; people do not name rivers after words for social position. Would we name rivers Mister or Madam. It seems far more reasonable that the river names and the titles both originate in some common personality in remote antiquity.
 

If we assume this common source was beyond known Indo-European and Semitic cultures we have an explanation for the different forms among diverse people over wide geographical areas. The don tradition dominated all Caucasian people but different groups remembered differently as the groups diversified. Thus we have don/dom in western Europe, -dom in Teutonic, don and adon in Hebrew, and the ever-present Don rivers. Social customs, linguistic meanings, and phonetics drifted over time but the river names clung to the land.
 

Such thesis provides insight into the diffusion of the title and name phenomena: it was a vertical diffusion down through the generations as cultures drifted apart; it was not a horizontal diffusion from one contemporary culture to the next.
 

Further insight into this process is noted by the ancient restriction of the titles to a high social class, a nobility. The titles were mechanisms for great social respect; they did not originate out of mythological tales. They were used in everyday hard reality for maintaining order and due process in social intercourse where one class was superior to another. The titles carried from one generation to the next among that high social class. The origin would be in some remote ancestor who also carried that title. If a Don in Spain acquired his title through inheritance from his father, then his father must have acquired it from his father, and so on back through the generations to some remote ancestor who also carried the title Don.
 

This process implies a powerful social force from highly cultured groups, contrary to our prevalent notions of primitive savagery among our Indo-European ancestry. There must have been a coherent cultural refinement on a grand scale. Our modern godless anthropological views may be more primitive than the people they assay to define.
 

As John Philip Cohane quoted from an unidentified Scandinavian source:  
 

Don was the one "from whom, so saith antiquity, the pedigrees of our kings have flowed in glorious series, like channels from some parent spring."