![\"A](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/bear.jpg\")
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In many European languages the words for bear<\/strong> have their origins in taboo avoidance. It is thought that people who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE) believed that if you called a bear by its true name, it would hear you and may harm you. So instead they used different names when referring to bears [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n The words for bear in Germanic languages can be traced back to the PIE *b\u02b0er-<\/em> (brown), via the Proto-Germanic ber\u00f4<\/em> (bear). <\/p>\n Examples include bear (English \/ West Frisian), beer<\/em> (Dutch \/ Afrikaans), B\u00e4r<\/em> (German), Bier<\/em> (Luxembourgish), bj\u00f6rn<\/em> (Icelandic \/ Swedish), and bj\u00f8rn<\/em> (Norwegian \/ Danish \/ Faroese) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n In Slavic languages the words for bear can all be traced back to the Proto-Slavic word medv\u011bd\u044c<\/em>, from *medu-\u0113dis<\/em>, from med\u044a<\/em> (honey) &\u200e *(j)\u011bsti<\/em> (to eat), so could be translated as “honey eater”. <\/p>\n Examples are \u043c\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0435\u0434\u044c<\/em> (Russian), m\u00e9dved<\/em> (Slovenian), medv\u011bd<\/em> (Czech), nied\u017awied\u017a<\/em> (Polish). The Hungarian word for bear, medve<\/em>, possibly comes from the same root [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n In Baltic languages the words for bear from the Proto-Baltic *talk-, *tl\u0101k-<\/em>, from Proto-Indo-European *tel-k-, *tl-ek-<\/em> (to push, to hit, to kick, to trample), and could be translated as \u201ctrampler\u201d, \u201cstomper\u201d, \u201cpounder\u201d, [source<\/a>]. In Latvian the word is l\u0101cis<\/em>, and in Lithuanian it’s lokys<\/em>.<\/p>\n The PIE word for bear was *h\u2082\u0155\u0325t\u1e31os<\/em>, which is possibly related to destroying or destruction – another taboo avoidance? This is the root of *artos<\/em> in Proto-Celtic, \u03ac\u03c1\u03ba\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2<\/em> (\u00e1rktos) in Greek, ursus<\/em> in Latin and ari<\/em> in Albanian, and related words in modern Celtic and Romance languages [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In many European languages the words for bear have their origins in taboo avoidance. It is thought that people who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE) believed that if you called a bear by its true name, it would hear you and may harm you. So instead they used different names when referring to bears [source]. The words […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,100,102,104,107,108,116,123,124,10,15,20,31,45,52,67,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-czech","category-danish","category-dutch","category-english","category-etymology","category-faroese","category-german","category-hungarian","category-icelandic","category-language","category-latin","category-luxembourgish","category-norwegian","category-proto-indo-european","category-russian","category-swedish","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}