this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Kirp123@lemmy.world 31 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Arktos means bear in Ancient Greek and the name Arctic comes from Arktikos which could be translated as near the bear. One theory is that it was named because of the Ursa constellations (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor). Antarctica just means opposite of the Arctic.

The scientific name for Brown Bears is Ursus Arctos. Ursus means bear in Latin while Arctos means bear in Ancient Greek so their name translated is Bear Bear.

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

And then there's the grizzly bear, ursus arctos horribilis, horrible bear bear. My favourite part is that 'horribilis' is a mistranslation from English into Latin; 'grisly' is synonymous with 'horrible', but 'grizzly' actually means 'greyish'

Edit: Ursus arctos griseus or Ursus arctos canescens would be the most likely names of it had been translated correctly (grey bear bear and greying (with age) bear bear, respectively)

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

If it comes from the constellations, we got pretty fucking lucky