Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise

[Ante Aikio]

[Patrick Ryan:]

>A word for 'bear' might also be derived from related
>roots meaning 'carry' or 'cut out off', and might capture of one two
>essential characteristics of 'bears': standing up while advancing,
>cave-hibernating.

[Joat Simeon:]
(snip)
>To people living in the woods, equipped with spears, "destructive one" is a
>pretty good name for an animal characterized by large size and bad temper.

[Stefan Georg:]
>Friends, have a look at some Siberian languages; the very fact that these
>fellas can get *really nasty* is responsible for the fact that most people
>who *really know* them   use some taboo word, lest the bloddy beast
>understands its name and comes along to look at who's talking.
>Zoo-goers may use descriptive names for our brown friends, forest-dwellers
>aren't stupid enough to do that.

But it is precisely the descriptive names that are created for taboo reasons.
E.g. Finnish has karhu 'bear' < karhea 'coarse' (referring to fur), kontio
'bear' < kontia 'crawl on all fours' (referring to manner of motion). As
for 'destruction', there's Finnish hukka 'wolf' = hukka 'loss,
destruction', hukkua 'get lost, perish, drown'. These words predate zoos,
for sure ;-)

Speaking of wolf and bear, how would a semantic shift 'wolf' > 'bear'
sound like? It has been suggested that Proto-Samoyed *wErkE 'bear' (E =
schwa) < Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?

 - Ante Aikio