That name, which I am free to use because the only bear near where I live is the decidedly unthreatening American black bear, is h₂ŕ̥tḱos. Or at least it was in Proto-Indo-European, the hypothesized base language for languages including English, French, Hindi, and Russian. The bear, along with the wolf, was the scariest and most dangerous animal in the northern areas where Proto-Indo-European was spoken. Same with Arthur, a name probably constructed to snag some of the bear’s power. In Slavic languages, the descriptions got even better: the Russian word for bear is medved, which means “honey eater.”