Time for another Hungarian linguistics thread. Featuring my favourite topic in etymology: taboo words.

Well, the thread won’t really use taboo words. God forbid. Those are taboo!

Instead, it will look at the words that replaced them: ancient euphemisms.

1/n

Ancient Hungarians settled in the area of present Hungary sometime in the late ninth century. They came from far away, from somewhere in the Ural Mountains, and they were nomads. Settling meant adopting a completely new lifestyle.

2/n

A new lifestyle comes with new concepts, which also need new words. The language spoken by nomadic Hungarians had no words for many subjects related to agriculture, statehood, or Christianity. They learnt the words for those things from local Slavic populations.

3/n

Words such as:

rozs = rye
széna = hay
bab = bean
cseresznye = cherry
király = king

are all Slavic loanwords in Hungarian. But there is one that stands out:

medve = bear

Hadn’t Hungarians encountered bears before the later stage of their journey? Seems unlikely.

4/n

It’s more likely that they did encounter bears – but they preferred not to name them. Nomadic peoples often believed that speaking the name of something powerful and scary might make it appear. Hence, they used roundabout phrases as euphemisms.

5/n

There are some known examples of such euphemisms in Hungarian:

wolf = farkas = ‘the one with a tail’
stag = szarvas = ‘the one with antlers’

(Note the -s suffix, which signals having something.)

6/n

In these cases the original taboo words were forgotten and the euphemisms lived on in standard language.

It is very likely that the Slavic “medve” entered Hungarian as a similar euphemism, replacing the original word for bear.

7/n

Imagine someone coming up with this cunning plan. “I know! Let’s refer to bears in Slavic! Then they won’t know we’re talking about them!”

But it seems to have worked, as they weren’t all killed by bears.

8/n

And that might be… because the Slavs too had exercised necessary caution. Conforming to ancient health and safety regulations, they had responsibly suppressed their original taboo word. “Medved” was a euphemism that meant ‘honey eater’.

So the Hungarians were doubly safe.

9/n

As for the original Hungarian taboo words for bear, wolf or stag, nobody has any idea anymore what they could have been.

Which is for the better I guess!

10/10 The End