random amusing thing: we know that bears used to have another name in germanic languages but not what that name was
the word bear originates from an old germanic word meaning something along the lines of "the brown one", because people were terrified of bears and the usual thing of not being comfortable saying the name of such things
i wonder if there's some minor language or dialect somewhere that's preserved something related to the original name
-F
@KamareDrache i could see the connection between ferus and bear but what about other germanic words for bear, like bjørn? There's also apparently an old english word for bear, bruin, that sounds way closer to the modern word brown than anything else -F
@Felthry "bear" and the other Germanic words all come from Proto-Germanic *berô. bjørn in particular comes from the accusative stem *bernu-. Bruin apparently comes from the Dutch word bruin "brown", which is cognate with English "brown".