TIL that Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) is the bearest of all bears – "ursus" means bear, and "arctos" also means bear, so the scientific name translates to "Bear bear bear"

individual@toast.ooo · 3 days ago

TIL that Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) is the bearest of all bears – "ursus" means bear, and "arctos" also means bear, so the scientific name translates to "Bear bear bear"

Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz · edit-2 3 days ago

In the Indo-European family it’s mostly the Balto-Slavic and Germanic branches that avoided the original word, *h₂ŕ̥tḱos - the first one replaced it with “honey-eater”, the second one as you said with “the brown one” (IIRC it would be *bʰérh₃os or similar)

If *h₂ŕ̥tḱos survived in Germanic it would’ve become **urght [ɜːt] in English, and probably **Urcht [uɐ̯χt] in German. Not sure in the Slavic languages, but Lithuanian (Baltic) does keep irštvà for “bear den”, so the bear itself would be probably **irštas.

Hegar@fedia.io · 2 days ago

I believe some uralic languages do it too. I’ve heard some attempts to link it to a circumpolar bear cult that there’s still scattered evidence for from groups as far away as the ainu, but I don’t know how solid that is.

Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz · 2 days ago

The case of Uralic vs. PBS + PGerm can be explained by interaction, but the Ainu doing the same is interesting.

TIL that Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) is the bearest of all bears – "ursus" means bear, and "arctos" also means bear, so the scientific name translates to "Bear bear bear"

TIL that Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) is the bearest of all bears – "ursus" means bear, and "arctos" also means bear, so the scientific name translates to "Bear bear bear"

Eurasian brown bear - Wikipedia

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