A related naming taboo I recently came across has to do with bears. All across the northern hemisphere cultures had a special reverence for bears and tended no

A related naming taboo I recently came across has to do with bears. All across the northern hemisphere cultures had a special reverence for bears and tended not to refer to them directly (perhaps because naming it might make it appear). One of the examples of this is in the Old English name Beowulf, which literally translates to "bee-hunter," i.e., a bear. To this day in Germanic languages (English included), the word for "bear" derives from "brown," a bear just being "the brown one."