The bear in Eurasian plant names: motivations and models

Abstract

Ethnolinguistic studies are important for understanding an ethnic group’s ideas on the world, expressed in its language. Comparing corresponding aspects of such knowledge might help clarify problems of origin for certain concepts and words, e.g. whether they form common heritage, have an independent origin, are borrowings, or calques. The current study was conducted on the material in Slavonic, Baltic, Germanic, Romance, Finno-Ugrian, Turkic and Albanian languages. The bear was chosen as being a large, dangerous animal, important in traditional culture, whose name is widely reflected in folk plant names. The phytonyms for comparison were mostly obtained from dictionaries and other publications, and supplemented with data from databases, the co-authors’ field data, and archival sources (dialect and folklore materials). More than 1200 phytonym use records (combinations of a local name and a meaning) for 364 plant and fungal taxa were recorded to help find out the reasoning behind bear-nomination in various languages, as well as differences and similarities between the patterns among them. Among the most common taxa with bear-related phytonyms were Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (L.) Spreng., Heracleum sphondylium L., Acanthus mollis L., and Allium ursinum L., with Latin loan translation contributing a high proportion of the phytonyms. Some plants have many and various bear-related phytonyms, while others have only one or two bear names. Features like form and/or surface generated the richest pool of names, while such features as colour seemed to provoke rather few associations with bears. The unevenness of bear phytonyms in the chosen languages was not related to the size of the language nor the present occurence of the Brown Bear in the region. However, this may, at least to certain extent, be related to the amount of the historical ethnolinguistic research done on the selected languages.

A Study of the Plant Folk Nomenclature of the Yi People in Xiaoliangshan, Yunnan Province, China, and the Implications for Protecting Biodiversity

“…Similarly, the Yi people in Xiaoliangshan named plants based on their characteristics, and the names are often related to the characteristic shape, colour, smell, or taste of the plant. In addition to directly describing plant characteristics, the folk plant names used by the Xiaoliangshan Yi people are often based on animals, a nomenclature practice that is common in other places [3,35,36,37]. The frequent use of animal names for plants can be explained by the traditional livelihood of the Yi people, which involves various animals.…”

Aegopodium alpestre Ledeb. Apiaceae

“…Aegopodium alpestre is sometimes eaten as vegetable. The leaves of Aegopodium podagraria are used as salad (Kalle and Sõukand 2016;Kolosova et al 2017;Łuczaj and Szymański 2007;Sõukand et al 2017;Vogl-Lukasser et al 2010).…”

The ethnobotanical character of the Polish Dictionary of Folk Stereotypes and Symbols

“…At the meeting point between the world of animals and the world of plants there are ethnolinguistic studies on the names of animals in plant names; cf., inter alia, J. Waniakowa (2015) or V. Kolosova et al (2017).…”