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celtiberia

Ursus, Arktos, Hartza, Oso, Orso, Bear…

http://www.celtiberia.net/articulo.asp?id=1134

First of all, primary linguistic evidence for the existence of 'sacred'animals was provided by the enormous record on linguistic taboo. Research by e.g. Zelenin (1929-30), Riegler (1936-7), Bonfante (1939), Havers (1946), Emeneau (1948), Smal-Stocki (1950), Treimer (1954-5), Mansur Guérios (1956), Hegedüs (1958), Ruud (1960), Leach (1964), to whom I subsequently added myown research (Alinei 1986, 1993a), had already shown that everywhere in the world the names of wild animals are subject to taboo. Besides innumerable ethnographic examples, even Indoeuropean reconstruction has observed that the true name of an animal such as the 'bear' -attested in lat. ursus, gr árktos, sanscr. ŕ9ks˘a-, av. arša-, arm. arj, alb. arí, oir. art, galls. arth (PIE *r9kto-s or *r9kso-s, cp. Pokorny 875)- has been replaced in many language areas by noah names, motivated by descriptive words: 'the brown' in Germanic languages (e.g. aisl. bjorn, dan. bjPrn, sved. bjorn, ags. bera, engl. bear, aat. bero, bär, ned. beer etc.), 'honey eater' in Slavic languages (e.g. aslav. medvjed, cec. medved, pol. niedžwiedž, russ. medvěd, (> lit. meška)), 'hairy' in Baltic languages (e.g.. lit. lokys, lett. lacis, apruss. clokis), and 'good calf' in Celtic languages (e.g. airl. mathgamain, irl. mathghamhain, a compound of maith 'good' and ghamain 'calf'