How the etymology of "Arctic" complicates the cryptic etymology of "bear"

No one knows what bears are "truly" called. And as such, no one knows what "Arctic" really means either.

As the Slovak Studies program at the University of Pittsburgh explains, "bear" is actually just a placeholder name, to protect the speaker from saying something much, much more horrifying:

The Old Slavic people (the linguistic ancestors of today's speakers of, e.g.,