Bears and No Bears
Or, What Club Penguin Taught Me
Yesterday, I was contemplating the etymological origins of the word “Arctic,” as my paid subscribers will be aware. This is possibly one of my favorite etymology facts.
The word “Arctic” comes to us from the Greek word “Arktos,” meaning “bear.” The word “Antarctica,” therefore, means “antibear,” or more precisely “opposite the bear.”
“Aha,” you might be thinking, “As we have learned from school, or possibly Club Penguin, the Arctic is home to many polar bears. Antarctica does not, and instead provides a lovely land for penguins to frolick through. This must be why the Arctic is called, essentially, “bearland,” and Antarctica is the opposite of that.”
Well, that would be a good guess. But you would be wrong.
If you only know one constellation, and you’re from the Northern hemisphere, it’s likely to be the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper is a descriptive, if not especially poetic, name for the constellation also known as Ursa Major, or the Great Bear. It’s very bright and fairly distinctive, which is probably why so many people recognize it.
It’s also important because it helps us locate Polaris, or the North Star, which was used for navigational purposes over thousands of years. Polaris is actually part of Ursa Minor (the Little Bear), but it tends to be fainter than Ursa Major. It’s easier, then, to use Ursa Major to find it.
One of these days I’m going to have to do a deep dive into astronomy, because the movement of the Earth relative to the stars is something that’s always gone over my head (pun not intended). But I know enough to say that certain constellations appear only in the Northern Hemisphere, while others appear only in the South. And the Great Bear is one of the constellations that only appears in the North.
Meaning it appears in the Arctic, but not Antarctica.
Meaning “bearland” has an enormous, starry bear watching over it from the celestial spheres, while “antibearland” does not.
The living habits of polar bears are, in fact, completely coincidental.
There’s no one source for this story, since it seems to be a widely accepted fact. Instead, I recommend looking up pictures of polar bears. They’re very cute.