This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Stealthyboy: Removed one of Garurumon's entries in the Badass section. He's not that badass to qualify for two.
What's with the hit at furries? How is wanting to be a wolf needing 'irony or modesty'? —Azaram
Removed Kuromaru and replaced with Wolf. Kuromaru is NEVER confirmed to be a wolf.
Wolves weren't originally called wolves. "Wolf" is the alias we gave them because we were too afraid to use their actual name, which went on to disappear from history, probably before 300 AD.
Jaabi: Huh? Is this referring to canis lupus or something else?
Anke: That bit made me curious, too, and dug around online a bit. [1]
explains the principle in detail with "bear", and the second shorter letter for "wolf".
Griffinmills: Well, to be fair, that article straight up puts an asterisk on all of it and says it is all, "a hypothetical reconstruction." The section on wolf/wolves is also from a completely uncredited and undocumented source in an email to the original author. The original author also puts forth the alternative theory that they simply had used the word for "destructive" in the root for "bear" (the actual topic discussed on the page is the root and possible taboo* for the word bear) and wanted to remove some of it's "power" by not calling it by that name (*rkso- specifically) so it was actually a DE-powering of the beasts in question and that they, perhaps, had respect for wolves too, but less than for bears. It's all hypothetical though and the article itself says not all dialects and languages had these taboos so it isn't really cohesive. The joke about what bears call humans is good too!
*The exact details of the taboo are not known. Did it apply to hunters who were hunting the bear and did not want to warn it? Or to hunters hunting other animals and did not wanting to rile up the bear and have it steal their prey? Or did it apply to anyone who did not want to summon the bear by its name and perhaps become its prey?[2]
