Measurements of |&Dgr;J|, effective magnetic moments, and natural linewidths were made for most of the CW lines in H2O and D2O lasers. Using these results, previous results on couplings between the various CW lines, and published experimental data on the energy levels of H2O, identifications have been proposed for most of the CW lines as vibrational‐rotational and pure rotational transitions in theJ= 5 andJ= 6 levels of the (100), (020), and (001) vibrational states of H2O.