fidoruh:a-book-of-creatures:allthingslinguistic:There’s a theory that early Europeans started saying

fidoruh:a-book-of-creatures:allthingslinguistic:There’s a theory that early Europeans started saying “brown one” or “honey-eater” instead of “bear” to avoid summoning them, and similarly my friend has started calling Alexa “the faceless woman” because saying her true name awakens her from her slumberEnglish has an avoidance register used in the presence of certain respected animals, which sounds fancy until you realize it’s spelling out w-a-l-k and t-r-e-a-t in front of the dog.Mx. Leah Velleman on twitterIcelandic folklore requires you avoid saying the names of evil whales, otherwise you’ll draw their attention.Yall have evil whales? Finnish has this as well. The Finnish word for “bear” probably refers to its rough fur and is a euphemism. One of the many poems collected in Kalevala, Finland’s national epic in spite of the poems being Karelian in origin, is pretty much a bunch of spells to drive out bears, and it lists dozens of euphemisms for bear.My favorite is “angry cat” -- source link