Taboos on Animal Names in Ukrainian

Abstract

In Lg. 24.56-63 (1948), M. B. Emeneau re-examines the problem of taboos on animal names, with special reference to the IE names for the bear in Slavic. Collecting nearly the whole literature on the subject, he demonstrates that there is as yet no satisfactory explanation: why was the original IE name for the bear (represented by Lat. ursus, Gk. drktos, etc.) displaced in Slavic by a compound meaning 'honey-eater' (Russ. m'edv'6d'), in Baltic by a word meaning 'one who licks' (Lith. lokys), and in Germanic by a word meaning 'brown' (Eng. bear)? Emeneau summarizes the two current theories. Frazer and Meillet believe in a 'hunter's taboo': when the animal is hunted, the utterance of its name is forbidden because, understanding human speech, it would either escape or become dangerous to the hunter. (Emeneau rejects at once Meillet's additional explanation, that the name is not used because the animal is 'repugnant'.) Keller, Schrader, and Gray, on the other hand, believe in a 'religious taboo': for the primitive hunter, the bear was in some way part of the world of gods and demons; to name it gave the bear the power to harm the hunter. According to this view, the original name of the bear in the Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic languages had a 'religio-demonic meaning'. Hallowell, in an article cited by Emeneau (Bear ceremonialism in the northern hemisphere, Amer. Anthr. NS 28.1-175), establishes a correlation between that ceremonialism, which regarded the bear as in some sense a sacred figure, and the on the bear's name while hunting. But Hallowell's data are too recent to explain the displacement of the bear's name in the older languages except those of the Finno-Ugric family. On the basis of Hallowell's correlation, Emeneau proposes (Lg. 24.59-60) an interesting hypothesis: that the bear ceremonialism of the circum-polar area is at least as old as classical antiquity, and that the area embraced even the Danube territory, possibly the Balkans, and 'could easily involve the Germanic and the Balto-Slavic speakers of that period', who 'about 2000 years ago (or longer ...) practised bear ceremonialism .... These IE speakers practised, concomitantly with ceremonialism, a verbal taboo, to such an extent that several new formations independently displaced the old IE word for bear. ... undoubtedly Christianity in its various forms wiped [the ceremonialism] out as a flourishing cult, leaving only meagre relics here and there ... and certainly a tendency even now to avoid the bear's name ... .' Emeneau finally presents the following opinion (24.60): 'The introduction of the ethnological material of the present period and that vaguely hinted at by classical sources complicates the problem, ... and makes the solution hypothetical in a very high degree. It does, however, make it certain that we cannot speak, as Frazer and Meillet did, of a hunter's taboo affecting the name of the bear in the Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages. It is much more probably that a religious taboo is in play. Keller and Schrader led on the correct path ....'