Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Latin. I'm really nothing more than a Latin wannabe.
And when I put "Fire Bear" in the English to Latin translator, I got "Igneus Gero". I looked up the words individually, and everywhere I looked "Igneus" translated to "Fiery" or "On Fire", and "Gero" translated to Bear. Back and forth, forwards and backwards, I tested Latin to English and English to Latin translators, and that's where Igneus Gero came from.
Fast forward eight years later, technology has improved, I've sifted through 3 different social networking trends, and all was right in my world, except out of the blue, something happened to make mer realize that all this time I had it WRONG,. As it turns out, "Gero" did NOT mean Bear (noun), but rather it meant "to bear" (verb), or to carry.
FUCK!
How could this happen? I thought I was so thorough! But after thinking about it for a while, I thought to myself, 'Maybe it can still work… instead of "Bear on Fire", it meant "To Bear/Carry Fire". Sure the grammar's potentially wrong, but it's too late to change it, right?' I mean, shit! I named two different paintings under the premise that "Gero" meant "Bear". "Guitar Gero" (now titled "Guitar Hero - Fail"), and "Gero Hero" (now titled "Bat Bear") were named like this because I thought that Gero meant "bear"!
Well, after mulling it over for another two more years, I finally decided "NO, this isn't going to work". I went online, did some more research, and figured that what I was really trying to say was "Igneus Ursus". But to be honest, I'm still not sure if this is totally right. Ursus definitely seams to mean "bear" (noun) and Igneus definitely still means "fiery". And according to my personal Latin expert, Prof. Google Translate, Igneus Ursus translates to "The Fiery Bear". God I hope Google's right this time.
Anyways, if you are familiar with Latin, please don't hesitate to let me know if I'm right or wrong. I'd rather be wrong, correct it, and get it right, then just plain wrong.
Gratias Tibi
I think it should be Ursus Igneus
ReplyDeleteYou only need to look to the stars to find Ursa Major and Ursa Minor
Ursa is a she bear so Ursus is correct for the masculine
but I believe for your phrase to be grammatically correct the descriptive follows the noun, otherwise you are using the bear to describe the fire, not using the fire to describe the bear.
It's been about decade since my last Latin class, but I have about 4 years of studying it in high school and college.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can remember, you should be good to go with the new motto. The word order can be either Ursus Igneus or Igneus Ursus since Latin grammar is based on declension endings to determine whether it is subject, direct object, indirect object, etc. The usually latin sentence structure is Subject+Adjective+Direct Object+Verb, but the endings allow the structure to be flexible with the meaning being the same.