this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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This is actually slightly inaccurate. It wasn’t called that because of no polar bears vs polar bears.
it was called that because the Greek used stars for navigation. Ursa Major (the constellation which is north) is literally called the big bear (Ursa = Bear). So the northern land became the sort of bear land. And the southern land became the not bear land. It’s a funny coincidence that it ended up matching polar bear ranges.