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Father Bear Loves His Cub
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Etymology
The English word "bear" comes from Old English bera and belongs to a family of names for the bear in Germanic languages, in origin from an adjective meaning "brown". In Scandinavia the word for bear is björn (or bjørn), and is a relatively common given name for males. The use of this name is ancient and has been found mentioned in several runestone inscriptions. In Germanic culture, the bear was a symbol of the warrior, as evident from the Old English term beorn which can take the meaning of both "bear" and "warrior".
The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European name of the bear is h₂ŕ̥tḱos, whence Sanskrit r̥kṣa, Avestan arša, Greek ἄρκτος (arktos), Latin ursus, Welsh arth (whence perhaps "Arthur"), Albanian ari, Armenian arj. Also compared is Hittite ḫartagga-, the name of a monster or predator. In the binomial name of the brown bear, Ursus arctos, Linné simply combined the Latin and Greek names.
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