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(crosspost)
Jun. 5th, 2017 02:29 pm(Responding to this post about bears)
etymonline.com says:
bear (n.)
“large carnivorous or omnivorous mammal of the family Ursidae,” Old English bera “a bear,” from Proto-Germanic *beron, literally “the brown (one)” (source also of Old Norse björn, Middle Dutch bere, Dutch beer, Old High German bero, German Bär), usually said to be from PIE *bher- (3) “bright, brown” (see brown (adj.)).
Greek arktos and Latin ursus retain the PIE root word for “bear” (*rtko; see Arctic), but it is believed to have been ritually replaced in the northern branches because of hunters’ taboo on names of wild animals (compare the Irish equivalent “the good calf,” Welsh “honey-pig,” Lithuanian “the licker,” Russian medved “honey-eater”). Others connect the Germanic word with Latin ferus “wild,” as if it meant “the wild animal (par excellence) of the northern woods.”
arctic (adj.)
late 14c., artik, in reference to the north pole of the heavens, from Old French artique and directly from Medieval Latin articus, from Latin arcticus, from Greek arktikos “of the north,” literally “of the (constellation) Bear,” from arktos “bear; Ursa Major; the region of the north,” the Bear being the best-known northern circumpolar constellation. This is from *rkto-, the usual Indo-European root for “bear” (source also of Avestan aresho, Armenian arj, Albanian ari, Latin ursus, Welsh arth); see bear (n.) for speculation on why Germanic lost the word.
So, if I’m reading it right, we don’t know exactly what the Germanic word could have been, or even if there ever was one, but we do know the root it would have come from.
