The third Dnieper rapid according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who, as is known, left two lists of rapids' names in "Slavic" and "Russian", was called "Gelandri" in the "Russian" list. The word is a combination of two Kartvelian roots: "geli" - "wolf" and "anter" - "man", which in combination gives us something like the Ukrainian "vovkulaki" - a werewolf. Here it is appropriate to remember that Herodotus left a story about how the members of the local tribe of Neuri turned into wolves once a year. Finally, the name of the threshold echoes the ancient Gelon, described by the same Herodotus and identified with the Belsk settlement in the Poltava region, in the epicenter of Ukrainian Kartvelian toponyms.
But what is even more stunning, in the Laz dictionary we find the words გელანდრიკაფა (геландрикапа) и გელანდრიკუ (геландрику), which mean "bending", which may describe the rapid's form. Here "gela" is a verbal prefix with no relation to wolves.
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