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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Asklemmy
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Does that mean Beowulf means bee wolf in old English?
Yes, or perhaps less literally "bee hunter", it was used as euphemism for a bear. There's some theories that saying the actual word for bear was taboo (some theories say that people believed saying it's name could attract one), so they used euphemisms like that, or "the brown one", bero, which is where the English word "bear" comes from.
Now that just makes me curious as hell about the original work for bear. Maybe something more similar to the Latin “ursa”?