2500: Bears: How Fear Developed Terminology Oct 16, 2021

The word 'bear' and its many similar Germanic counterparts, along with other very different sounding words of Northern European regions diverge from the Proto-Indo-European '*rtko' as seen in the Latin 'ursus' and Greek αρκτικός (arktikos). The Proto-Germanic '*berô' is related to the word 'brown' (and as a matter of course, 'beaver') meaning 'brown one'. Many people have claimed this is as a euphemistic reference from fear of bears who more prevalently inhabited Northern Europe than around the Mediterranean where they were fewer and smaller. Not only Germanic languages have this phenomenon, as the Russian медведь (medved) means 'honey-eater' and some Celtic references once had similar euphemistic qualities.