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arrive: arrive: [13] When speakers of early Middle English ‘arrived’, what they were literally doing was coming to shore after a voyage. For arrive was originally a Vulgar Latin compound verb based on the Latin noun rīpa ‘shore, river bank’ (as in the English technical term riparian ‘of a river bank’; and river comes from the same source). From the phrase ad rīpam ‘to the shore’ came the verb *arripāre ‘come to land’, which passed into English via Old French ariver. It does not seem to have been until the early 14th century that the more general sense of ‘reaching a destination’ started to establish itself in English.
=> riparian, river
river: river: [13] Etymologically, the term river denotes the ‘banks’ of a river, rather than the water that flows between them. Its distant ancestor is Latin rīpa ‘bank’. From this was derived the adjective rīpārius (source of English riparian ‘of a riverbank’ [19]), whose feminine form came to be used in Vulgar Latin as a noun, *rīpāria, denoting ‘land by the water’s edge’.

From it evolved Italian riviera ‘bank’ (whence English Riviera [18]) and Old French riviere. This originally meant ‘river bank’, but this subsequently developed to ‘river’, the sense in which English adopted the word. A heavily disguised English relative is arrive, which etymologically denotes ‘come to the shore’.
=> arrive, riparian, riviera
brae (n.): "steep slope," in northern England especially "the sides of a hill," early 14c., from Scottish, "slope, river bank," from Old Norse bra "eyelash," cognate with Old English bræw "eyelid," German Braue "eyebrow" (see brow). "The word must have passed through the sense of 'eye-brow' to 'brow of a hill', supercilium (cf. OE. eaghill 'eye-hill'=eyebrow)" [OED].
Bremen: city in Germany, from Old Saxon bremo "edge" (related to English brim (n.)), in reference to its site on a river bank.
riparian (adj.): "of or pertaining to river banks," 1849, with -an + Latin riparius "of a river bank," from riparia "shore," later used in reference to the stream flowing between the banks, from ripa "(steep) bank of a river, shore," probably literally "break" (and indicating the drop off from ground level to the stream bed), or else "that which is cut out by the river," from PIE root *rei- "to scratch, tear, cut" (cognates: Greek ereipia "ruins," eripne "slope, precipice;" Old Norse rifa "break, to tear apart;" Danish rift "breach," Middle High German rif "riverbank, seashore;" English riven, rift).
river (n.): early 13c., from Anglo-French rivere, Old French riviere "river, riverside, river bank" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *riparia "riverbank, seashore, river" (source also of Spanish ribera, Italian riviera), noun use of fem. of Latin riparius "of a riverbank" (see riparian). Generalized sense of "a copious flow" of anything is from late 14c. The Old English word was ea "river," cognate with Gothic ahwa, Latin aqua (see aqua-). Romanic cognate words tend to retain the sense "river bank" as the main one, or else the secondary Latin sense "coast of the sea" (compare Riviera).

U.S. slang phrase up the river "in prison" (1891) is originally in reference to Sing Sing prison, which was literally "up the (Hudson) river" from New York City. Phrase down the river "done for, finished" perhaps echoes sense in sell down the river (1851), originally of troublesome slaves, to sell from the Upper South to the harsher cotton plantations of the Deep South.
Stafford: city in England, mid-11c., Stæfford, literally "ford by a landing-place," from Old English stæð "river bank, shore" + ford (n.). County town of Staffordshire, which, as a name for a type of earthenware and porcelain made there is attested from 1765. The city was noted in medieval England as a source of blue cloth.
strand (n.1): "shore, beach," Old English strand "sea-shore," from Proto-Germanic *strandaz (cognates: Danish and Swedish strand "beach, shore, strand," Old Norse strönd "border, edge, shore," Old Frisian strond, Middle Dutch strant, Dutch strand, Middle Low German strant, German Strand "beach"), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from PIE root *ster- "to stretch out." Strictly, the part of a shore that lies between the tide-marks. Formerly also used of river banks, hence the London street name (1246).