Okhta [ohta] is a river in the southern part of the Karelian Isthmus. This hydronym is generally supposed to have originated from Uralic languages, however, really it has no trustworthy Uralic etymology. The hydronym can be explained through the language of the people who lived in the region in the Neolithic period. Those people spoke a language that was a juncture between Yeniseian languages, Caucasian languages, Hattic, and Sumerian. The component oh of ohta can be correlated with Proto-Yeniseain *ʔoq “to smear”, and the component ta can be correlated with Pumpokol tet “river”. Also, ohta can be correlated simply with Ket word-form ɔqtij “to smear (with clay)”. And, thus, ohta most probably was originally oq-tat and meant “smearing river”. The water of Okhta is quite muddy, with notable impurities of silt and peat.
