Rusty the Bear

An interesting thing about the Slavic word for bear is that it has been universally etymologically explained as meaning “honey eater”.  Honey = med; vjed = to eat out.rustAnother interesting thing about the Slavic words for bears is that they are of roughly two types.  Most begin with an “m” whereas the Polish version begins with an “n”.  Thus we have, e.g.:

  • medvjed – in Croatian, but
  • niedźwiedź – in Polish.

Since miod in Polish is much the same as med (or mead for that matter) but the bear name has in Polish the first letter “n”, it seems that the “m” version is the “correct” or, at least, the older one and that the Polish “m” became an “n” over time.

Yet another interesting thing is that continental European brown bears are, well, brown.

Finally, we note this interesting translation from a dictionary put together by Oskar Priese in 1890:rost

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May 27, 2016

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