Editing 2381: The True Name of the Bear

{{comic
| number    = 2381
| date      = November 4, 2020
| title     = The True Name of the Bear
| image     = the_true_name_of_the_bear.png
| titletext = Thank you to Gretchen McCulloch for fielding this question, and sorry that as a result the world's foremost internet linguist has been devoured by the brown one. She will be missed.
}}

==Explanation==
The Canadian Internet linguist {{w|Gretchen McCulloch}} [https://twitter.com/gretchenamcc/status/1113195661275611137 tweeted] about [https://www.charlierussellbears.com/LinguisticArchaeology.html the theory] that the word for bear became taboo in some branches of Indo-European languages - notably the Germanic one - and it was replaced by euphemisms. In the Germanic branch, the euphemism may have been "the brown one," and thus the modern word "bear" (derived from Germanic "beran") would more literally translate into the color "brown" rather than the animal.

The Indo-European word for bear is ''*h₂ŕ̥tḱos'' (given in the comic as the root *rkto-, a later form of the root) which has been inferred from modern languages that still use a word derived from it. In the comic, McCulloch applies {{w|Sound change|sound shifting}} laws to it to guess how it would have evolved in English had it not been superseded, but saying it seems to actually summon a bear.

(The asterisk is used by linguists to mark a word that doesn't currently exist in a spoken language - in this case, because it's a reconstructed ancestor to modern words in a number of languages.)

Interestingly enough, the hypothesized word “arth” is the same as the Welsh and Cornish for the word “bear.” Welsh belongs to the Celtic language family, which is one of the Indo-European branches that still uses a word derived from ''*h₂ŕ̥tḱos'', as do the Italic (Romance), Greek and Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) branches, while Germanic, Slavic and Baltic branches abandoned it for different euphemisms. Another Indo-European language where the word for bear is very close to this extrapolation is Armenian, where it's written [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/արջ արջ] and pronounced “artch”. The comic does not explain why speakers of Welsh, Cornish, Italic, Greek, Indo-Aryan, and Armenian languages do not summon a bear every time they refer to one.{{Citation needed}}

Linguists on Tumblr have observed[https://esoanem.tumblr.com/post/748473429591785472/bophtelophti-esoanem-bophtelophti] that "arth" is not actually how the Indo-European root for 'bear' would have emerged in English; "orx" or "orse" is a more likely hypothesis.

Use of true names appears to be [[1013: Wake Up Sheeple|highly effective in the xkcd universe, rather like a fairy tale]], and it is also {{tvtropes|IKnowYourTrueName|a common trope}} elsewhere. Some say a true name contains clear meaning of who someone or something really is. {{w|Gretchen McCulloch}} has been mentionned in [[2250: OK/okay/ok]]. In later comics, Gretchen is used again, causing annoyance in [[2421: Tower of Babel]]. Since these stories occur during biblical times or in extra-dimensional realities, it is not Gretchen, but obviously this is how linguists look in xkcd from now on.

==Transcript==
:[Megan walks in from the left, looking down at her phone. Cueball and Ponytail are standing next to each other.]
:Megan: Wow - according to the internet, we don't know the true name of the bear.
:Cueball: What?

:[Gretchen McCulloch, drawn with short, curly hair, comes on-panel from the right.]
:Megan: Apparently there was a superstition that saying its name would summon it. "Bear" and "bruin" mean "the brown one." Its actual name has been lost.
:Cueball: Wow.
:Ponytail: Gretchen, is this for real?

:[Zoom-in on Gretchen.]
:Gretchen: Well, sort of
:Gretchen: The Proto-Indo-European root was *rkto-
:Gretchen: It was lost in the Germanic languages like English, but survived elsewhere, e.g. Greek "arktos" and Latin "ursus"

:[Back to the second panel, with Megan holding her phone down, Ponytail with her hands in the air, and Gretchen with her hand on her chin.]
:Megan: So could we figure out what the word would have been in English?
:Gretchen: Hmm. I mean, we'll never know, but given Germanic sound shifts, a reasonable guess might be "arth"?
:Ponytail: ''No!!''

:[The panel zooms in again to Gretchen.]
:Ponytail (off-panel): ''Stop! AAAAA!''
:Gretchen: What??
:Ponytail (off-panel): Don't ''say'' it!

:[Ponytail is holding her palms out. Megan is no longer in the panel.]
:Ponytail: What have you ''done''?
:Off-panel noise: <big>'''''ROAR'''''</big>
:Gretchen: Oh
:Gretchen: Oh no

{{comic discussion}}

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[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
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