A WORD THAT REFUSED TO MOVE

What do you call the animal you must not name?

Northern Europe renamed the bear so no one would speak his true name — or so linguists believe. Romanian kept the Latin word untouched, all the way from Rome. And every winter in Moldova, the bear still dies and rises.

Walk the chain of names

URS < URSUS: the Latin word, kept, as DEX records
MEDVED' = HONEY + TO EAT: the Russian name, spelled out
DIES AND RISES: the New Year bear of Moldova

Jocul ursului: furred troupes at New Year. Photo: Slaythehousebootsdownfrog, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The string of names the neighbours gave him:

*rtko- the lost old name
medved' the honey-eater · Russian
bear the brown one · English
Bär the brown one · German
mesikämmen honey-paw · Finnish
urs the word we kept · Romanian

Urs. The word that refused to move.

What the dictionaries say

The word we kept

In DEX, urs comes from Latin ursus, and lup from lupus. Both appear in Coresi's Evanghelie cu învățătură, printed at Brașov in 1581. The line is unbroken: from Rome to us, the word never went anywhere.

URS n.

– Lat. ursus (DEX '09)

CORESI, EV. 447

See in DEX

LUP n.

ml lupus (MDA2)

CORESI, EV. 195/24

See in DEX

The wolf earns one line: proof that urs is no accident. Both words came all the way from Rome without changing their names.

DEX cites the Cazania from the Pușcariu–Procopovici edition (CC2); the note in RRL 4/2023 confirms the imprint: Brașov, 1581.

The First Romanian School at Șcheii Brașovului — Coresi's town. Photo: Andrei kokelburg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 RO

Trajan's Column in Rome — Trajan's Column, Rome: the Latin end of the thread. Photo: Jebulon, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

The Lupa Capitolina, the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus — The Lupa Capitolina: Rome's she-wolf. Lup is Latin too. Photo: Wilfredor, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

What the neighbours say

Everyone renamed him

The rest of Europe walked around the old name. Each language baptised its bear again, after something else: appetite, colour, endearment. Four baptisms, each with its gloss.

medved'

Russian

the honey-eater

From med (honey) + ed- (to eat): a taboo replacement of the old name, after Vasmer.

Vasmer, s.v. медведь

Honeycomb with honey — Honeycomb: the sweet half of the Russian name. Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

bear

English

the brown one

From Old English bera, from *bero: “the brown (one)”. The verb beran is another root.

Etymonline, s.v. bear

The first folio of Beowulf, in Old English — Beowulf, first folio: Old English, the language of bera. Photo: anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Bär

German

the brown one

From Old High German bero, on record in the eighth century; Germans call him “der Braune”.

DWDS, s.v. Bär

The first page of the Abrogans (Codex Sangallensis 911) — The Abrogans (Codex Sangallensis 911): Latin with Old High German glosses. Photo: Unknown, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

otso · mesikämmen · metsän ukko · metsän kuningas

Finnish

the poetic name · honey-paw · the old man of the forest · the king of the forest

Even karhu began as a term of endearment. The full list is in “The Bear and the Year”.

MAA / Helsinki

Celebration After a Bear Hunt, by Gallen-Kallela, for Seven Brothers — “Celebration After a Bear Hunt”, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, for Seven Brothers. Photo: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Name the bear

Four rounds, four ruses. Choose how you would name him, then see who named him the same way.

1 Colour
The hunters will not speak his name. You point at his colour — what do you call him?
2 Appetite
You name him after what he eats — what do you call him?
3 Kinship
You coax him like an old relative — what do you call him?
4 Title
You give him a title, to keep him at a distance — what do you call him?

Score: 0 of 4 attested

The game options are invented; the true names are the ones in the verdicts, with their sources.

What the neighbours called him

The strategies and the attested names, in brief.

What the neighbours called him
Ruse	Name	Who chose it
Colour	the brown one	the Germans and the English: bear, Bär
Appetite	the honey-eater	the Russians: medved'
Kinship	the old man of the forest	the Finns: metsän ukko
Title	the king of the forest	the Finns: metsän kuningas

Why rename him?

Linguists believe the northern branches ritually replaced the old name, out of hunters' taboo — Etymonline's words are “it is believed”. The theory, not the fact, is all we have.

HYPOTHESIS

Others connect the Germanic word with Latin ferus, “wild”: the wild beast of the northern woods. One line, to keep the theory honest.

Why he mattered so much

The ritual

The bear was never just an animal. Three stops — Athens, Muri, Moldova — say why his name was walked around.

The bear-girls of Brauron

At Brauron, Athenian girls served Artemis as arktoi — she-bears — in saffron robes, with sacred dances, races and sacrifice; the procession set out from the Acropolis, and the Arkteia was held every four years.

“Shedding my saffron robe I was an arktos (bear) at the Brauronia.”
Aristophanes, Lysistrata, lines 641–647 (about ten years old)

The Brauron sanctuary with the temple of Artemis — The sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, with the church of Saint George. Photo: C messier, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Saffron flowers — Saffron (Crocus sativus): the colour of the Arkteia robes. Photo: Emilie40, Wikimedia Commons, CC0

A bust of Aristophanes — Aristophanes, a bust in the Uffizi: the poet who kept the testimony. Photo: Alexander Mayatsky, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The goddess with the bear at Muri

Near Bern, a Gallo-Roman bronze shows the seated goddess face to face with a bear, which seems to hold fruit. The base carries the dedication: Deae Artioni / Licinia Sabinilla — “To the goddess Artio, from Licinia Sabinilla” (CIL 13, 05160). The group is now in the Historical Museum of Bern.

The goddess Artio seated, face to face with the bear — a Gallo-Roman bronze — The goddess Artio, the Muri group: a Gallo-Roman bronze. Photo: Sandstein, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

An 1863 drawing of the Muri bear — The Muri bear in an 1863 drawing: the old record of the group. Photo: Adolf Hermann (1817-1876), Wikimedia Commons, public domain

The bear that dies and rises

At Comănești and Dărmănești, at New Year, the bear troupes dance through the streets: the bear dies and rises, falls into hibernation and is woken. We are reading ethnography, not biology.

A dancer in a bearskin, close up — Jocul ursului up close: fur, mask, step. Photo: Slaythehousebootsdownfrog, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The word that stayed

The neighbours baptised their bear again, so they would not call him by name. We always called him the same: urs.

Sources

Dictionaries first, then etymologies and ritual. Every risky claim points at its source.

Dictionaries

Etymologies

Ritual

Print

Coresi, Brașov 1581: RRL 4/2023 (PDF)

Type: Fraunces, Newsreader and Atkinson Hyperlegible, under the SIL Open Font Licence.