Bears and why they mostly are called otherwise

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi writes:

>Aryan / Iranian (e.g. Avestan vr.ka- 'wolf'). Any parallels?>>

-- there's the fact that Anatolian (Luvian) walwa/i means "lion" rather than
"wolf", as in all the other IE languages.

That might indicate (since there are or were wolves in Anatolia as well as
lions) that the 'wolf' meaning is a semantic narrowing from "dangerous one",
which would seem to be supported by the Hittite "walkuwa" ("dangerous") and
Sanskrit "a-vrka" ("safe").

There's also been a suggestion that the *uelkwo word is a derivative of
*uel-, meaning 'tear, lacerate', so the name would be "the thing that rips
you up". (Some Russian linguist, wasn't it?)

Of course, the fact that there's no clear PIE root for "lion" is also
indicative, since in Bronze Age and neolithic times lions were known all
across Greece, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East, and into India.