河(hé) - river in Mandarin

河 (hé) is the everyday word for a river, the channel of flowing fresh water that cuts across the land. It sits alongside 湖 (hú), lake, and 海 (hǎi), sea, as one of the basic words for a body of water, and it turns up in place names constantly.

The measure word matters: a single river takes 条 (tiáo), the measure word for long thin things, so "one river" is 一条河 (yì tiáo hé). 一个河 (yí gè hé) sounds wrong to a native speaker even though 个 (gè) is the default measure word beginners reach for first.

Chinese river names almost always end in 河 (hé) or the grander 江 (jiāng): 黄河 (Huánghé), the Yellow River, and 长江 (Chángjiāng), the Yangtze. There is no reliable rule for which suffix a given river takes, so it is mostly a matter of learning each name as a fixed phrase.