River Dee, Aberdeenshire

The River Dee (Scottish Gaelic:Uisge Dhè) is a river in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It rises in the Cairngorms and flows through Strathdee to reach the North Sea at Aberdeen. The general area is called Strathdee, Deeside, or "Royal Deeside" in the region between Braemar and Banchory because Queen Victoria came to love the place and built Balmoral Castle there. The name is attested as early as the second century AD in the work of the Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy, as Δηοῦα (=Deva), meaning 'Goddess', indicating a divine status for the river in the beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of the area. The several other rivers of the same name in Great Britain have the same origin as has the Dee's near neighbour to the north, the River Don.