Types

River: A large natural stream, which may be a waterway.

Creek (North America and Australia): A small to medium sized natural stream. Sometimes navigable by motor craft and may be intermittent.; Creek (UK and India): A tidal inlet, typically in a saltmarsh or mangrove swamp. Alternatively, between enclosed and drained, former saltmarshes or swamps. In these cases, the stream is the tidal stream, the course of the seawater through the creek channel at low and high tide.

Tributary: A contributory stream, or a stream which does not reach the sea but joins another river (a parent river). Sometimes also called a branch or fork.

Brook: A stream smaller than a creek, especially one that is fed by a spring or seep. It is usually small and easily forded. A brook is characterized by its shallowness and its bed being composed primarily of rocks.

Other names

In the United Kingdom, there are several regional names for a stream:

• Beck is used in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria.
• Bourne is used in the chalk downland of southern England.
• Brook is used in the Midlands.
• Burn is used in Scotland and North East England.
• Stream is used in Southern England.
• Syke is used in lowland Scotland and Cumbria.

In North America:

• Bourn in Cascadia refers mostly to wide but relatively short, stilly streams with broad, rocky and gravelly beaches/banks, uneven bottoms very deep in some places but dappled with small, rocky aights, with uncommonly clear water except for adjacent pools filled with debris and plantlife in which fishes and amphibians spawn. Often a distributary of a river and a tributary of a coastal or lakeside marsh, or, somewhat less frequently, an "independent" (not especially near a lake or ocean) swamp or other wetland.
• Kill in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey comes from a Dutch language word meaning "riverbed" or "water channel", and can also be used for the "UK" meaning of 'creek'.
• Run in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, or Virginia can be the name of a stream.
• Branch, fork, or prong can refer to tributaries or distributaries that share the same name as the main stream, generally with the addition of a cardinal direction.