Bernd Brunner, in his Bears: A Brief History (trans. Lori Lantz), introduces the denizen of the Appalachian woods as the American Black Bear (Ursus americanus) with the synonym baribal, a term unknown to me. Furthermore, as a 1982 query by A. Richard Diebold, Jr. indicates, it’s not at all clear where this word came from. Folk etymology suggests a loanword from a Native American language, but Diebold could find no evidence for this claim.
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