I am not sure what you mean by "Eurocentric" here. These distinctions exist in most Asian languages and probably in other continental landmasses. Peoples livin

I am not sure what you mean by "Eurocentric" here. These distinctions exist in most Asian languages and probably in other continental landmasses. Peoples living on remote oceanic islands are the exception rather than the rule, and lost the words for larger freshwater bodies because they didn't tend to encounter them, just as some inland peoples had no words for oceans. You've even mentioned a distinction... "brackish". It is pretty important to know if one can drink water or not. By the way, in some parts of Europe these distinctions don't quite happen either. "Loch" is used for branches of the sea as much as freshwater. In some places "lake" and "lago" are used for both. In fact, without looking it up, "lagoon" is probably related to the Romance word for "lake". River isn't reserved for freshwater in European languages. The Menai Straits are Afon Menai (Menai River) in Welsh. In tradition, the ocean was described as a river encircling the continents. "Which makes sense right?" Most of them do, except waitapu. Taboos often make little sense, and the reasons can be long forgotten. Sometimes they are just dangerous stretches of water. We used to have notions of taboo here too.