FW: [SEELANGS] pronun. of "Medvedev" (cont.)

[Andrew Jameson]

One of my students at Lancaster Uni (UK) was called Ulla Kontio. She
explained that her surname was the Finnish taboo name for bear. Hunters had
to use kontio for bear instead of the real Finnish word, which is karhu, or
else the bear would hear them and come. (that's my recollection, sorry if
it's inaccurate.)
Andrew Jameson, Malvern, UK


-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Martin Votruba
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 3:16 PM
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] FW: [SEELANGS] pronun. of "Medvedev" (cont.)

> closest hand tended to adopt euphemisms.  Hence the Indo-European form 
> doesn't show up in Slavic (honey-knower) or Germanic (various 
> relatives of 'the brown one', such as English 'bear') and much of 
> Celtic.

I remember reading this on several occasions.  There's a difference, though,
between the Celts and the separate-parallel Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic
development.  The Celts who don't have the ancient
hrtko- (Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Manx) borrowed the Germanic word (as
bearach/berach, bear) rather than develop a symbolic name of their own.  The
non-Indo-European Ugrics did the same in Central Europe -- Hungarian has
_medve_ from Slavic.

Welsh (arth), Breton (arzh) and some of what Celtic can be traced in Spain,
I think, use the Indo-European root for "bear."


Martin

votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu

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