In its first part, the present article is concerned with the ie. etymologies of the Pontic rivers Don, Donec, Dnjepr, and Dnjestr. While it is clear, that they all contain the ie. root *danu ‘river’, especially the compound names Dnjepr and Dnjestr are newly interpreted in a broader European context and shown to mean the ‘wide (broad) river’ and the ‘muddy river’. Also, the relationship to their Greek names, Borysthenes and Tyras, are shown to be semantically motivated in a similar way. The second part of the paper comments upon the consequences, these findings have for the reconstruction of the ie. ‘Homeland’, using only well-established linguistical methods, especially the principle ‘The more generic a name, the older it is’.