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With the transition from Yiddish to Hebrew under the influence of Zionism, the Hebrew word for "bear", "Dov" (דב), was taken up in contemporary Israel and is at present among the commonly used male first names in that country. "Ten Bears" (Paruasemana) was the name of a well-known 19th Century chieftain among the Comanche. Also among other Native American tribes, bear-related names are attested. There is evidence of prehistoric bear worship, see Arctic, Arcturus, Great Bear, Berserker, Kalevala. Anthropologists such as Joseph Campbell have regarded this as a common feature in most of the fishing and hunting-tribes. The prehistoric Finns, along with most Finno-Ugric peoples, considered the bear as the spirit of one's forefathers. This is why the bear (karhu) was a greatly respected animal, with several euphemistic names (such as otso, mesikämmen and kontio). The bear is the national animal of Finland. This kind of attitude is reflected in the traditional Russian fairy tale "Morozko", whose arrogant protagonist Ivan tries to kill a mother bear and her cubs — and is punished and humbled by having his own head turned magically into a bear's head and being subsequently shunned by human society. "The Brown Bear of Norway" is a Scottish fairy tale telling the adventures of a girl who married a prince magically turned into a bear, and who managed to get him back into a human form by the force of her love and after many trials and difficulties. There has been evidence about early bear worship in China and among the Ainu culture as well (see Iomante). Korean people in their mythology identify the bear as their ancestor and symbolic animal. According to the Korean legend, a god imposed a difficult test on a she-bear, and when she passed it the god turned her into a woman and married her. In addition, the Proto-Indo-European word for bear, *h₂ŕ̥tḱos (ancestral to the Greek arktos, Latin ursus, Welsh arth (cf. Arthur), Albanian ari, Armenian arj, Sanskrit ṛkṣa, Hittite ḫartagga) seems to have been subject to taboo deformation or replacement in some languages (as was the word for wolf, wlkos), resulting in the use of numerous unrelated words with meanings like "brown one"
Myth and legend
(English bruin) and "honey-eater" (Slavic medved). Thus some Indo-European language groups do not share the same PIE root. The theory of the bear taboo is taught to almost all beginning students of Indo-European and historical linguistics; the putative original PIE word for bear is itself descriptive, because a cognate word in Sanskrit is rakṣas, meaning "harm, injury". Legends of saints taming bears are common in the Alpine zone. In the arms of the bishopric of Freising (see illustration) the bear is the dangerous totem animal tamed by St. Corbinian and made to carry his civilised baggage over the mountains. A bear also features prominently in the legend of St. Romedius, who is also said to have tamed one of these animals and had the same bear carry him from his hermitage in the mountains to the city of Trento. Similar stories are told of Saint Gall and Saint Columbanus. This recurrent motif was used by the Church as a symbol of the victory of Christianity over Paganism, represented by the fiery. Bears are a popular feature of many children's stories including Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Berenstein Bears, and Winnie the Pooh. The constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor represent bears.