• Successful_Try543@feddit.org
    1556·
    2 个月前

    The name Arctic has nothing to do with the presence of bears, it got its name from either of the two star constellations Ursa Major or Ursa Minor (Edit: meaning big and small bear), where ursa is arctos in Greek, which are both present in the northern hemisphere and tge latter even contains the celestial north pole.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      735·
      2 个月前

      And those are all “bear”…

      But I suppose your point is that it is a degree removed from bears, that it is based on the constellations that are based on bears, rather than direct… But “nothing” to do with bears isn’t correct …

      • Klear@piefed.worldEnglish
        21·
        2 个月前

        BTW, “bear” means “the brown one”, which is more or less “the animal that must not be named”. This is true in a bunch of languages (Czech has “the honey eater”).

        It might be the oldest known euphemism.

        • Hegar@fedia.io
          18·
          2 个月前

          This is sometimes called the Indo-European Bear Taboo, because it’s observed in many IE languages, mostly northern and central ones.

          In some areas without bears it looks like mountain lions get the same treatment. So it may stem from a common IE tradition of euphemizing the largest predator and that tradition changed as IE groups moved into new areas.

          But it may just be a human tendency to avoid speaking the name of dangerous or hateful things - many use euphemisms instead of saying trump’s name.

          • hakase@lemmy.zip
            5·
            2 个月前

            Also happened with “beaver” in at least Germanic, Celtic, and Balto-Slavic, so not just apex predators.

          • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            2 个月前

            That certainly explains all of the “pet names” I’ve given myself over the years.

            • Hegar@fedia.io
              2·
              2 个月前

              I can’t remember where i heard it, i think it was mentioned maybe in a video by stefan milo or crecganford?

              All i could find in a few minutes of googling is this paper on polish etymologies of bear, lynx and wolf as possibly taboo zoonyms.

          • hakase@lemmy.zip
            3·
            2 个月前

            From a similar thread on the other website hypothesizing what the Modern English word would be if it survived:

            After the later metathesis to *h₂ŕ̥ḱtos, it could have become Proto-Germanic *urhtaz, which might have taken any number of forms in Old English, *urht, *orht, *roht. Probably at the extreme it could have become English *rought, pronounced like ‘wrought’ or ‘rout’.

            Good luck with your summoning!

        • 0x0@infosec.pub
          1·
          2 个月前

          If i remember correctly bear isnt even the actual name but another nickname, the real name is long forgotten and replaced by winnie the pooh

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
      26·
      2 个月前

      Also, ‘ant-’ just means “opposite”. It can negate a statement, but it can also express opposition or relative position.

      In this case, ‘Antarctic’ just means “on the opposite end of the planet from the Arctic.”

    • Brown5500@sh.itjust.works
      7·
      2 个月前

      I think you are trying to say “well duh, of course they were dead on. The stars literally aligned and told them that.”

      • not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        5·
        2 个月前

        The word Arctic comes from the Greek word ἀρκτικός arktikos “near the Bear, northern”[4] and from the word ἄρκτος arktos meaning “bear,” named for either the constellation known as Ursa Major, the “Great Bear”, which is prominent in the northern portion of the celestial sphere,[5][6] or the constellation Ursa Minor, the “Little Bear”, which contains the celestial north pole (currently very near Polaris, the current north Pole Star, or North Star).[7]

    • chaogomu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      2 个月前

      Why do you think Ursa Major was in the northern sky? To the ancient Greeks, bears were things that lived in the north.

    • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      391·
      2 个月前

      Yeah. The Greeks also didnt live anywhere near the arctic and couldn’t have possibly known of the existance of polar bears there. They just named the north “the arctic”, aka, the place the bear constellations point. Then, the antarctic is “the opposite of that”

        • Abyssian@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
          2·
          2 个月前

          I can’t be certain, but the thought keeps me up at night. Even worse, there could be an antibear in the room with you right now. We have no idea what they look like and they may be invisible to non antipeople.

          • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 个月前

            You’re thinking of dark bears which don’t interact with regular bears and are hard to detect.

            • Abyssian@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
              1·
              2 个月前

              Racism’s not cool, man. Nothing wrong with a dark bear interacting with any other color bear.

  • Eh-I@lemmy.worldEnglish
    321·
    2 个月前

    The north pole pole has the presents of the bears. The south is the opposite, anti-polaric bears should be everywhere. Hence the mystery of bearyonic asymmetry.

  • HM King Charles III DG FD@feddit.ukEnglish
    10·
    2 个月前

    Antarctica was originally called Australia before it was discovered until they discovered Australia and thought it was Antarctica which hadn’t been discovered yet