Why Do So Many Languages Avoid Saying Bear? In Case It Hears You

A name is treated as dangerous to utter, either because speaking it attracts the attention of what it names, or because the name is too sacred for ordinary use, or because uttering it risks offence. The name is therefore avoided and replaced with a description, a euphemism or a deliberately vague circumlocution. The substitute may itself become taboo over time and need replacing in turn, which produces chains of successive euphemisms. The practice applies to gods, to dangerous animals, to the dead, to illnesses and to spouses and in-laws in some societies.

The same solutions appear in unconnected languages:

• •A descriptive substitute, such as the brown one or the honey eater
• •A word from a neighbouring language, borrowed as a safe alternative
• •A deliberate mispronunciation of the dangerous word
• •A vague reference, such as the other folk or the good people
• •A title used in place of a personal name
• •Complete silence, with the referent indicated by gesture

The clearest documented case concerns the large dangerous animal of the northern forests. Germanic, Slavic and Baltic languages all lost the inherited word for it and replaced it with a description. The Germanic substitute appears to mean the brown one, which gives the modern English word. The Slavic one means honey eater. The Baltic one means the shaggy one. Comparison with Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, which kept the inherited word, shows what was lost. The replacement happening independently in three neighbouring families is strong evidence that the avoidance was real and widespread.

Not every case is about fear, and separating the motives clarifies what is happening in each. Some avoidance is respect rather than danger, as with names too sacred to pronounce, which are read aloud as a substitute word instead. Some is social rather than supernatural, as in the widespread practice of avoiding the personal names of in-laws, which marks a relationship rather than warding off anything. Some is practical, as with hunters avoiding the name of their quarry on the grounds that it might be warned. And some is simple politeness about subjects people would rather not name directly.

The practice is not confined to the distant past and recognising the modern versions makes the older ones less strange. Names for the devil proliferated in English precisely because the direct one was avoided. Serious illnesses acquire euphemisms and then lose them as the fear recedes, which happened to one disease during the twentieth century. Death attracts more circumlocutions than almost any other subject in ordinary speech. Some communities still avoid speaking the names of the recently dead. And the pattern of a euphemism becoming unusable and needing replacement is visible in real time in the language used about disability and about bodily functions.

Avoiding a dangerous or sacred name and substituting a description is found worldwide, and the substitute frequently becomes taboo in turn, producing chains of euphemisms. Germanic, Slavic and Baltic languages all independently lost the inherited word for the bear and replaced it with descriptions such as the brown one and the honey eater. The same process operates on death and illness today.