Friday Why: Why doesn’t the Berenstain Bear family get to have names?

March 6, 2009 — Emily

In the Berenstain Bears series, why are the main characters named only Papa, Mama, Brother, and Sister? The other characters get real names, like Freddy and Honey and Counselor Bob and Dr. Bearson (not the most creative names, but still, they’re names). And its not just that family calls each other Brother, Mama, etc – everyone does. It always bothered me, and I never thought up any explanation, let alone a reasonable explanation. Thoughts, anybody?

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Posted in Berenstain Bears series, Berenstain, Jan & Stan, Friday "Why?"/Random Book Questions, Uncategorized. Tags: Berenstain Bears. 8 Comments »

8 Responses to “Friday Why: Why doesn’t the Berenstain Bear family get to have names?”

Elizabeth Says:
March 6, 2009 at 10:12 am
This bothered me considerably as a small child. I think the explanation is they thought kids were too dumb to find it odd. Of course, it didn’t stop me from reading the books. And what atrocious books they were! I read every one.

It reminds me a bit of this cartoon we watched in my 8th grade German class. It involved a koala bear and some other animals, all heavily anthromorphized, but without any clothes. We never thought of them as naked until it was swimming time and suddenly they all put on swimming trunks.

Also: why does WordPress’s spell check recognize neither anthromorphized nor WordPress’s?
Lenore Says:
March 6, 2009 at 10:12 am
Dr. Bearson! LOL!
Emily Says:
March 6, 2009 at 10:21 am
Elizabeth: I think its anthroPOmorphized.
Lenore: I know! That’s the dentist – I can’t remember what the doctor’s name was.
Sadako Says:
March 6, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I think it’s because Stan and Jan B. had no imagination. Man, those bears were dull. Give me Little Bear anyday, or at least Winnie.
Elizabeth Says:
March 6, 2009 at 12:41 pm
What did I write? …Oh.

Little Bear!!!!!!
Elizabeth Says:
March 8, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Also, Emily: It’s funny that you cast this as “Why don’t they get to have names?” since I always thought of it as “Why are their roles within their family so important that the whole damn town has to call them Brother?” (or whatever). Like, I saw it as some mark of privilege of the family, like they’re royalty or something. Whereas you see the burden of their lack of individuality.
Emily Says:
March 9, 2009 at 8:45 am
Huh. That never occurred to me. I always thought of “Brother”, etc as actually being their names, and I thought they were just very stupid names. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the inconsistency of everyone else having real names and not them.
Sadako Says:
March 10, 2009 at 12:53 pm
They sort of do it the opposite in “Franklin.” Franklin has a name, but his friends/classmates are called things like Bear or Beaver and so on. So, what, he’s good enough for a real name but no one else is? And what happens if another bear moves into the neighborhood?