Interconnected

The original word for bear has been lost. From this article about euphemisms:

Our ancient ancestors were so worried about bears, they didn’t even want to name them because they feared [the bears] might overhear and come after them. So they came up with this word – this is up in Northern Europe – bruin, meaning “the brown one” as a euphemism, and then bruin segued into bear. We know the euphemism, but we don’t know what word it replaced

There’s some more about bears and also mushrooms and dandelions in this old blog post.