Liman (landform)

[1] The term describes many wet estuaries in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov; a synonymous term guba (губа) is used in Russian sources for insignificantly blocked estuaries of the Russian shores in the north.

[2] Water in a liman is brackish with a variable salinity: during periods of low fresh-water intake, wide-mouthed, deep examples will be greatly saline from inflow of sea water and evaporation.

English borrows the word from Russian: лиман, romanized: liman (Russian pronunciation: [lʲɪˈman]), taken from the Turkish: liman spread by Turks when they occupied the western and northern shore of the Black Sea.

Liman originated in the Greek: λιμήν/λιμάν, romanized: limin/liman (meaning bay or port).

Such features are found in places with low tidal range, for example along the western and northern coast of the Black Sea, in the Baltic Sea (Vistula Lagoon, the Curonian Lagoon), as well as along the lowest part of the Danube.