4 ms·
Correct. “Bear” actually derives from the word for “brown” (aka “the brown one”) rather that the PIE <asterisk>rkto- — think “ursus”. In facr, all germanic word
by drb91 9y ago
Correct. “Bear” actually derives from the word for “brown” (aka “the brown one”) rather that the PIE <asterisk>rkto- — think “ursus”. In facr, all germanic words derived from <asterisk>rkto- appear to be loan words from romance language (eg arctic).
Seems like the slavic version is roughly equivalent to “honey eater”.
Personally I’ve always thought this is because bears can both stand on two legs and roughly share a diet with humans. :)
- lokopodium 9y agoFunnily, Old Slavic for bear is бер, cognate to bear. However, this word became taboo too.
- hprotagonist 9y agobetter be extra-super careful! :)
- pandaman 9y agoIs it? I thought it is not known. Some people believe it's "behr" because of "behrlohga" - "bear den" but there is more plausible etymology for that being derived from actual Old Slavic "trash"/"dirt" than "behr + lohg".
- pimlottc 9y agoAtlas Obscura just had a nice article on this. "Wolf" is another example. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-does-dagnabbit-mean https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-does-dagnabbit-me... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/w%C4%BA%CC%A5k%CA%B7os https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
- benbreen 9y agoI've been making my way through David Anthony's The Horse, the Wheel and Language (really well-written book if anyone is interested, btw) and the thing about Proto-Indo-Europeans having some kind of religious taboo against naming bears is one of my favorite theories in it. I've been trying to learn Farsi and have some Latin, and it has been a lot of fun finding the points of origin in the really ancient words (Farsi word for bear is khers, which I assume is etymologically linked to ursus.) I just dug into the topic a bit more and came across the theory that King Arthur's name means "bear king" - fun correlate with the "Bee Warrior" mentioned above :) From Wikipedia: "Another possibility is that it is derived from a Brittonic patronym Arto-rīg-ios (the root of which, arto-rīg- 'bear-king' is to be found in the Old Irish personal name Art-ri)."
- aquadrop 9y agoI think slavic version is "the one who knows where the honey is" or "the one who controls the honey"
- mormegil 9y agoNope, that is a folk etymology, see https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/medv%C4%9Bd%D1%8C https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic...
- aquadrop 9y agoHm, interesting, always thought it was from parts 'med' and 'ved'. Though Ukrainian's 'vedmed' kinda contradicts suggestion that first part it 'medv'. Maybe it started some long time ago with 'honey eater' and then transitioned...