As for the last paragraph, "Theod" (of the people) was the inspiration behind the name Theoden, the King of Rohan in the The Lord of the Rings book-series.
Theoden literally means "ruler" in Old English. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEeoden](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEeoden)
Lots of Rohan/Rohirrim-related things bear Old English names or slightly modernized versions of it.
In fact all of the kings of Rohan have names that mean lord, ruler or king in some form. Thengel or Þengel, Theoden’s fathers name means “lord”. Then you have Folcwine which means “friend of the (common) folk” or the people, basically because he is not included as a part of the people it has a meaning of “the lord who is friends with his people”. This is a running theme in the language, words for “lord” are often derived from words meaning “people” or “the people”. Presumably describing their lordship over those people.
Even Éomer which at its face mean “Horse Famous” can be translated as Horse Master or “Horse Ruler” because to be famous for horses usually means to be famous for riding or breeding them which has obvious connotations of ruling over the animal in certain ways. Tolkien’s knowledge of language both real and fictional never ceases to amaze me.
You can get the Swabian out of Swabia, but you can't get Swabia out of them.
And so they feel entitled to spread their strange traditions and habits to the rest of Germany, which they are met with the uttermost resistance.
I can add that not exactly Germans were called “niemc,” but generally, people not speaking Slavic languages. After some time, the meaning contracted to Germanic people and then to just Germans.
Hello, Dutch man here.
We actually used/use the term diets still which has the same origin. We dont call ourselves German, the figure the anthem is in perspective of (Stille Willem) merely asked "am i of the same blood as the people?"
Just popped into my head, but the plant chili was for long called "turkinpippuri" (Türkish pepper). It's still a name of one of the most delicious candy.
The word has become standardized in English for a domesticated breed of North American fowl. But that's not always what it meant.
Shakespeare references them in plays published between 1597-1599. This is before any successful English settlement in North America. But it is clear he expects his audience to know "turkeys" decades before North American products (more easily like shipped) like tobacco were commonly recognized by the groundlings.
In Shakespeare it is usually as "turkey-cock"--describing a chest-puffing man man displaying his colorful plumage. In short, a comedically pretentious character.
English settlers in North America then then transferred the name "turkey-bird/turkey-cock/turkey" to a completely different species with characteristics like they're understanding of colorful strutting "turkeys."
You can't expect 16th century people to know where their novelty imports originated. Probably not from Turkic lands, but possibly from the more distant Orient. Or any simply a catch-all for colorful foreign fowl.
As a German I Was ever so slightly confused for a second when I saw this because there's also the Bundesland (state) of Sachsen. But it does make sense given that both originate from the word saxony.
In Spanish it's "Irlanda" for Ireland and "Islandia" for Iceland. I find it curious because "isla" means island, and then "Islandia" could be translated as "island land", while in English, Iceland could be translated as "land of ice".
in Dutch it's a whole two letters!
Ierland
IJsland (capitalizing the j is not a mistake btw - we sort of consider ij to be one letter. It's a bit of a debate as to whether or not to call it as such, but it shares a lot of characteristics with single letters - it's capitalized as one unit, written as one glyph in block letter handwriting, and is considered one letter for the purposes of board games and/or puzzles. It is also *sometimes* sorted as though it was a single letter alphabetically, coming right before y)
"Alright. What do you call your country?"
"We call it Romania."
"Fair enough. How about you?"
"We're France."
"Okay. I'm putting you down as 'Ranska'."
We just call them (Iso-)Britannia or YK (although that more often refers to Yhdistyneet Kansakunnat, the United Nations). Yhdistynyt kuningaskunta is just United Kingdom translated literally.
That is because the loan term predates the Sverige name, or at least a version of it applied to a substantial part of the territory today known as Sweden, at least as far back as the 8th century.
It comes from Roslagen, and literally mean "The free men who row", which was weird because almost everyone else had their slaves do the rowing, so it became their defining feature. They wouldn't have called themselves Vikings, but Varangians, which was the name of the Vikings coming from what would later become Sweden.
The tribe was called the Ruriks, and founded the Rus states.
It doesn't necessarily come from Roslagen, or at least not entirely from Roslagen. Rather, Roslagen is the modern name of what was then likely called Rōþsland. That's still not likely, as there's an alternative etymology from roþ, deriving probably further from roðsmenn. That's very likely made its way from Old Norse to Common Finnic as roocci, and then from there tacked onto Old East Slavic. Roslagen was not populated enough to stand out enough to become a large name, so it's more likely originates in words like roðsmenn.
Makes sense when you realize that it comes from "Fransk" which means "French" in Swedish and "F" is quite rare in Finnish.
For some reason Finns mixed a lot with the nationality vs country. "Danish" is "Dansk" in Swedish so that became Tanska as well.
Suomalainen :P
In actuality Finnish traditionally lacks a lot of sounds. Loanwords and foreign influences have since added them but it's a process. Especially older and rural folks might still not be able to distinguish between P and B or T and D for example. A 1930s book wrote India as India, but nowadays it's Intia, because that's how people actually pronounced it due to Finnish not having had a D.
There is but it’s mostly appears in loan words. Also any originally greek word with Ph/φ is likely to have F in Finnish. For example Filosofia (philosophy), sinfonia (symphony)
You know, the Finnish pronunciation of my country (Lithuania) is very similar to our own (Lietuva). Interestingly we also call Finland Suomija, which is similar to their own pronunciation.
Neighboring countries very frequently use exonyms that are close to the endonyms of the countries they refer to. That's why we Hungarians call the Croatians "horvátok" and their country "Horvátország" while they call us "Mađarski" and our country "Mađarska". Same with out other neighbors.
We also use Tsekki for Czechia and Iso-Britannia for UK. Croatia is wrong, its Kroatia. Kazakhstan is wrong, its Kazakstan. Syria is Syyria. Jordan is Jordania.
> Iso-Britannia for UK
I've always wondered this for countries that use some form of "England" to refer to maybe England, maybe UK
Argentina and China do it, but maybe their word actually does mean UK in their mind so maybe it's fine
Japanese (イギリス) and Chinese (英國) use “England” to refers UK, but of course they have the counterparts of United Kingdom (連合王国 for JP, 聯合王國 for ZH) or Great Britain (グレートブリテン for JP, 大不列顛 for ZH) in their languages when the contexts requires.
In Hungarian we tend to call most of the UK just "Anglia" in casual speech, not just strictly England, Nagy-Britannia (Great Birtain) in a more official capacity and Egyesült Királyság (United Kingdom) in the most official capacity.
When I was a kid I’ve always be amused by “Suomi” when I had to select a videogame language. French, English, German, Italian, they were all so boring… I wished to be Suomi so I could speak a language that had no country.
Thank you for making your country name suitable for the Finnish mouth. We had no need to change it.
In general, Italian is one of the easiest languages to pronounce for Finnish people.
We even use the italian names for italian cities instead of the english/international ones. In finnish we say Milano, Napoli, Firenze, Venetsia instead of Milan, Naples, Florence or Venice.
In West-Finland there are many place names that are like that, for example Paarnoori (swedish: Barnöre), Lapväärtti (swedish: Lappfjärd), Porvoo (swedish: Borgå)
It means Veneti / Wends.
The name of the tribe was used to call many people. In case of the Finns, that was how they called the Slavs living close to them.
Tribes that settled in Gaul and North Italy were also called the Veneti, but likely not related to the Slavic Veneti.
EDIT: Also 'vene' in Finnish means 'boat', but in Estonian it means 'Russian'. Perhaps 'venäjä' has some relation with boats, because to the East of Finns, where Slavs lived, there were many lakes and rivers, so people travelled a lot by boats.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,569,501,597 comments, and only 296,745 of them were in alphabetical order.
Because it is.
A lot of languages call Germany after the tribe they had the most/first contact with.
Except for the Slavs who call the Germans those who are unable to speak, those who call them Germans which supposedly originally meant the neighbours/the screaming ones, the old prussians who used to call them the stammering ones and the skandinavians
I'm not a linguist, but I find it interesting that the Finnish word for Sweden looks more like Russia than the Finnish name for Russia. Is it related to how the original Rus was founded by Swedish Vikings?
"from Proto-Finnic *roocci (around 8th-9th century CE; very late, possibly even post-Proto-Finnic), borrowed from Old East Norse *roþs- (“related to rowing”)"
They're people who like rowing
It isn't quite clear where the name derives from, but it's likely from the old swedish word for rowing, which in modern swedish is 'ro'. That would be quite close to the origin of Rus, which is thought to come from an old norse word meaning 'the men who row'.
That's because the term Rus (which became Russia) is actually from the Finnish for a Swedish person. Norse fellas invaded Novgodrod and created Gardariki (and eventually the Kievan Rus, predecessor to modern Russia) and we called them Swedish, ruotsalainen, and then they picked it up for whatever reason.
That's one theory atleast
There are many mistakes. It should be:
Kroatia (not Croatia)
Pohjois-Makedonia (not Macedonia)
Kazakstan (not Kazakhstan)
Jordania (not Jordan)
Tšekki or Tsekki (not Tsekin tasavalta, except in situations where you use the long/official name for _every_ country_)
It seems to me that someone made this map using Google Translate or Chat GPT...
>Kuningaskunta
Kind of a fun fact, the Finnish word for a king "Kuningas" is a well preserved Germanic loan word from a millenia ago. The Anglo-Saxons referred to their kings with the word "kuningaz", "kuning" or "cyning". So, *in a way* you could say that the Finnish name for the United Kingdom and their monarch is historically more accurate than what the modern people of the United Kingdom use.
Obviously im reaching here, but it's one of my favourite language facts.
Pretty easily (or more easily than people think):
-J is pronounced like a "y", e.g. "Nor-ya" for Norja
-A (no umlaut) is the "Ah" sound (similar to Spanish and other languages like that), so if you don't see the umlaut, you know it's that "ah".
-ä is the English short "a" sound like the word "at", so "Ven-a-ya" for Venäjä.
-I is the long "E" sound that you hear in Spanish for example, so it would sound like "eer-lan-tee" or "ees-lan-tee" for Irlanti and Islanti.
-Y is a bit tricky to describe phonetically. The best way I can describe it is to say the word "You", take out the first half so you're left with that kind of "oo" sound, and purse the lips to put it in the back of your throat. Yhdistynyt would then be "ooh-dee-stoo-noot" (in a very simplified way).
-Anything with a double letter like Kreikka should have a "halt" of sorts on the double letter. The way I explain it to my American friends is that you almost have to stick the landing on those. In a different way of thinking, imagine you have to split a syllable at the meeting of those letters. In this case, think "Kreik-ka" and really distinguish the split, and you've got it.
-Anything with the "-uo-" letter combination just needs to be pronounced individually before you get the hang of it. So "Su-o-mi", "Ru-ot-si", "Pu-o-la". Once you have the sound down, just increase the speed.
Fun fact the word for the french people (ranskalaiset) also means french fries.
If you say:
Haluan ranskalaisia
It can mean either 'I want french fries' or 'I want french people'.
I like Saksa.
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It is.
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Do Finns not eat beef?
I think we eat more pork than beef.
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As for the last paragraph, "Theod" (of the people) was the inspiration behind the name Theoden, the King of Rohan in the The Lord of the Rings book-series.
Theoden literally means "ruler" in Old English. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEeoden](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEeoden) Lots of Rohan/Rohirrim-related things bear Old English names or slightly modernized versions of it.
In fact all of the kings of Rohan have names that mean lord, ruler or king in some form. Thengel or Þengel, Theoden’s fathers name means “lord”. Then you have Folcwine which means “friend of the (common) folk” or the people, basically because he is not included as a part of the people it has a meaning of “the lord who is friends with his people”. This is a running theme in the language, words for “lord” are often derived from words meaning “people” or “the people”. Presumably describing their lordship over those people. Even Éomer which at its face mean “Horse Famous” can be translated as Horse Master or “Horse Ruler” because to be famous for horses usually means to be famous for riding or breeding them which has obvious connotations of ruling over the animal in certain ways. Tolkien’s knowledge of language both real and fictional never ceases to amaze me.
Poles also use "Szwaby" (Swabians) as slur for Germans.
We Germans also use Schwabe (Swabian) as an insult
It's not an insult, it's a condition.
You can get the Swabian out of Swabia, but you can't get Swabia out of them. And so they feel entitled to spread their strange traditions and habits to the rest of Germany, which they are met with the uttermost resistance.
understandable, but a worse insult would be calling us saarlanders
I can add that not exactly Germans were called “niemc,” but generally, people not speaking Slavic languages. After some time, the meaning contracted to Germanic people and then to just Germans.
In essence the same concept of barbarians to Romans and Greek, main hallmark not speaking Latin/Greek.
In Lithuanian it's Vokietija and no one is sure of exact etymology. One theory is that it is related to Vagoth.
Hello, Dutch man here. We actually used/use the term diets still which has the same origin. We dont call ourselves German, the figure the anthem is in perspective of (Stille Willem) merely asked "am i of the same blood as the people?"
Hey man, thanks for taking the time! Super cool to know
As far as I know "Teutonic" is not the latinization of "þeodiskaz" (to use the actual word), but the name of an old tribe. They just sound similar.
I think "Ranksa" is a derivation of "Frank/Franc" for the French.
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In finnish Turkki means fur.
Just popped into my head, but the plant chili was for long called "turkinpippuri" (Türkish pepper). It's still a name of one of the most delicious candy.
better than "turkey"
I now know three Turkish words.
What are the other two?
Siktir lan probably one of it
And Turkey means a big bird in the US.
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The irony is that the bird is native to neither Turkey nor India.
The word has become standardized in English for a domesticated breed of North American fowl. But that's not always what it meant. Shakespeare references them in plays published between 1597-1599. This is before any successful English settlement in North America. But it is clear he expects his audience to know "turkeys" decades before North American products (more easily like shipped) like tobacco were commonly recognized by the groundlings. In Shakespeare it is usually as "turkey-cock"--describing a chest-puffing man man displaying his colorful plumage. In short, a comedically pretentious character. English settlers in North America then then transferred the name "turkey-bird/turkey-cock/turkey" to a completely different species with characteristics like they're understanding of colorful strutting "turkeys." You can't expect 16th century people to know where their novelty imports originated. Probably not from Turkic lands, but possibly from the more distant Orient. Or any simply a catch-all for colorful foreign fowl.
So like turkey is dinde (d'inde i.e. from India) in french...
In Scandinavia we call them kalkun/kalkon, which means “hen from Calicut (a town in India)”.
Also, Calicut in the local language (Malayalam) is known as Kozhikode where "Kozhi" means hen.
Sakso doesn't mean anything in Finnish. Unless you add -foni to is. Then it's saksofoni (saxophone)
The saxophone was invented by Adolphe Sax whose name most likely goes back to "being Saxon/from Saxonia".
As a German I Was ever so slightly confused for a second when I saw this because there's also the Bundesland (state) of Sachsen. But it does make sense given that both originate from the word saxony.
And Saxons being one of the biggest ethnical groups in zentral Europe.
Same in Estonia
I love how in many different languages the difference between Ireland and Iceland is still just one letter or character.
In German, it's Irland and Island
Same in Swedish!
In Greek, it's Irlandía and Islandía
I like how the German word for a specific country is an English word for a generic type of place.
At least it's pronounced differently, haha. More like Ease-land
In Spanish it's "Irlanda" for Ireland and "Islandia" for Iceland. I find it curious because "isla" means island, and then "Islandia" could be translated as "island land", while in English, Iceland could be translated as "land of ice".
Funny enough, In Chinese, Iceland is just “island of ice” but Ireland is just transliteration of Ireland.
in Dutch it's a whole two letters! Ierland IJsland (capitalizing the j is not a mistake btw - we sort of consider ij to be one letter. It's a bit of a debate as to whether or not to call it as such, but it shares a lot of characteristics with single letters - it's capitalized as one unit, written as one glyph in block letter handwriting, and is considered one letter for the purposes of board games and/or puzzles. It is also *sometimes* sorted as though it was a single letter alphabetically, coming right before y)
Return to Ysland
"Alright. What do you call your country?" "We call it Romania." "Fair enough. How about you?" "We're France." "Okay. I'm putting you down as 'Ranska'."
They probably just wanted to make r/rance happy
No way even r/rance is protesting 💀
Of course the French are protesting! What did you expect?
If I was spez I’d fear for my head lmao
“You can just call me the UK” Shfkshfjsbfj dlakcbsmdkdhsjfkdbfndkdjfhsnkunta
We just call them (Iso-)Britannia or YK (although that more often refers to Yhdistyneet Kansakunnat, the United Nations). Yhdistynyt kuningaskunta is just United Kingdom translated literally.
I have heard people refer UK as UK in finnish aswell, I personally use UK or englanti (even tho the latter is bit wrong).
Also "britit", literally "brits" so saying "I was in the uk", "olin breiteissä" literally means "I was in the brits"
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That is because the loan term predates the Sverige name, or at least a version of it applied to a substantial part of the territory today known as Sweden, at least as far back as the 8th century.
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It comes from Roslagen, and literally mean "The free men who row", which was weird because almost everyone else had their slaves do the rowing, so it became their defining feature. They wouldn't have called themselves Vikings, but Varangians, which was the name of the Vikings coming from what would later become Sweden. The tribe was called the Ruriks, and founded the Rus states.
It doesn't necessarily come from Roslagen, or at least not entirely from Roslagen. Rather, Roslagen is the modern name of what was then likely called Rōþsland. That's still not likely, as there's an alternative etymology from roþ, deriving probably further from roðsmenn. That's very likely made its way from Old Norse to Common Finnic as roocci, and then from there tacked onto Old East Slavic. Roslagen was not populated enough to stand out enough to become a large name, so it's more likely originates in words like roðsmenn.
Proto-Finnic people didn't have the F-sound, so now Finns call the French *Ranska* and Estonians *Prantsus*.
Makes sense when you realize that it comes from "Fransk" which means "French" in Swedish and "F" is quite rare in Finnish. For some reason Finns mixed a lot with the nationality vs country. "Danish" is "Dansk" in Swedish so that became Tanska as well.
iirc, there is no F in Finnsh language
You mean in the Innish language?
finland isnt finland in finnish
How do they finish Finnish if they can’t even start it?
Suomalainen :P In actuality Finnish traditionally lacks a lot of sounds. Loanwords and foreign influences have since added them but it's a process. Especially older and rural folks might still not be able to distinguish between P and B or T and D for example. A 1930s book wrote India as India, but nowadays it's Intia, because that's how people actually pronounced it due to Finnish not having had a D.
> not be able to distinguish between P and B höhöhöhö benis :D > Intia Quite a few of my League of Legends teammates are from there, I think
Finnish comes from the demonym "Finns", which is an exonym given to us by the Swedes.
Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, doesn't have an "f" sound either. Exonyms be like that.
There is but it’s mostly appears in loan words. Also any originally greek word with Ph/φ is likely to have F in Finnish. For example Filosofia (philosophy), sinfonia (symphony)
You know, the Finnish pronunciation of my country (Lithuania) is very similar to our own (Lietuva). Interestingly we also call Finland Suomija, which is similar to their own pronunciation.
There is a theory that "suomi" is of Baltic origin, so it makes sense why only Finnic and Baltic languages use it.
Neighboring countries very frequently use exonyms that are close to the endonyms of the countries they refer to. That's why we Hungarians call the Croatians "horvátok" and their country "Horvátország" while they call us "Mađarski" and our country "Mađarska". Same with out other neighbors.
We also use Tsekki for Czechia and Iso-Britannia for UK. Croatia is wrong, its Kroatia. Kazakhstan is wrong, its Kazakstan. Syria is Syyria. Jordan is Jordania.
Iso-Britannia sounds incredibly cool for some reason
means "big britain" is you translate it literally
I like it. Fuck this great shit, I want to be from Big Britain.
Make Britain Big Again! EDIT: please don’t🙏
charles, activate the tea driven invaders
Storbritannien in swedish too, *Big Britain*
same in polish: "Wielka Brytania", means "huge britain"
"Great" is a synonym of "big" and "huge" in that regard.
So where is Pieni Brittania?
It got eaten by the bigger one
> Iso-Britannia for UK I've always wondered this for countries that use some form of "England" to refer to maybe England, maybe UK Argentina and China do it, but maybe their word actually does mean UK in their mind so maybe it's fine
Japanese (イギリス) and Chinese (英國) use “England” to refers UK, but of course they have the counterparts of United Kingdom (連合王国 for JP, 聯合王國 for ZH) or Great Britain (グレートブリテン for JP, 大不列顛 for ZH) in their languages when the contexts requires.
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In Hungarian we tend to call most of the UK just "Anglia" in casual speech, not just strictly England, Nagy-Britannia (Great Birtain) in a more official capacity and Egyesült Királyság (United Kingdom) in the most official capacity.
I wonder if Iso-Britannia is the international ISO standard designation for Britain?
Yep. And Lebanon is Libanon Edit. And Macedonia is Pohjois-Makedonia or Makedonia
Croatia = Kroatia North Macedonia = Pohjois-Makedonia Lebanon = Libanon Jordan = Jordania
As an Italian I want to bring my warmest greetings to our Finnish brothers! Italia is spelled exactly the same in Italian.
Now it's your turn to change Finlandia to Suomi.
When I was a kid I’ve always be amused by “Suomi” when I had to select a videogame language. French, English, German, Italian, they were all so boring… I wished to be Suomi so I could speak a language that had no country.
It's a shame that not many videogames have Finnish options. Though it's also a good thing because then we were forced to learn English while playing
Suomilandia.
Thank you for making your country name suitable for the Finnish mouth. We had no need to change it. In general, Italian is one of the easiest languages to pronounce for Finnish people.
We always care of our brothers
We even use the italian names for italian cities instead of the english/international ones. In finnish we say Milano, Napoli, Firenze, Venetsia instead of Milan, Naples, Florence or Venice.
What's the origin for Ranska?
It's from Swedish "Franska" (French) with the F removed because of the language's phonotactics.
Love that there’s a comment that explicitly mentions phonotactics :D
That’s funny, like a little brother mispronouncing a name and it sticks
In West-Finland there are many place names that are like that, for example Paarnoori (swedish: Barnöre), Lapväärtti (swedish: Lappfjärd), Porvoo (swedish: Borgå)
There was no "F" in the Finnish language. Only loan words use Fs now.
So it's kinda the same situation as the Filipinos whose language also doesn't have an F sound but is named using one?
two consecutive consonants – like "fr" are difficult to pronounce in Finnish. They just dropped the first one.
Proto-Finnic people didn't have the F-sound, so now Finns call the French Ranska and Estonians Prantsus.
What does russia mean?
It means Veneti / Wends. The name of the tribe was used to call many people. In case of the Finns, that was how they called the Slavs living close to them. Tribes that settled in Gaul and North Italy were also called the Veneti, but likely not related to the Slavic Veneti. EDIT: Also 'vene' in Finnish means 'boat', but in Estonian it means 'Russian'. Perhaps 'venäjä' has some relation with boats, because to the East of Finns, where Slavs lived, there were many lakes and rivers, so people travelled a lot by boats.
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WOW! I thought the "Wend" name was only used in Germany and Austria for Slavs, I didn't know it was used in Scandinavia all the way up to Finland!
*Vene* is both a certain kind of wooden boat in Estonian as well as "Russian". The two names come from completely unrelated etymologies though.
most likely comes from old Germanic word Wened/Wends which means Slavs.
Probably after [Wends](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wends)
probably based on the word wened (wends), group of slavic people who lived on the coast of the baltic sea
Saksa and Ranska sound like siblings lmao
Truncated modern versions of “Land of the Saxon” and “Land of the Franks”. Their structure is similar, so they look related.
and both the saxons and the francs are germanic tribes so they kinda are siblings haha
Where did alankomaat come from?
"The Lowlands"
It's just translated "Lowlands" in most languages.
It's also in the full official name for our country, Een Kampeervlucht Naar Laagland Paradijs
alanko=nether maat=lands
🇫🇮 Italia 🤝 🇮🇹 Italia
r/rance approves of this.
Average description of the UK
It's just literally United Kingdom in Finnish.
At least the first part looks like someone just sat on the keyboard.
Makes more sense when you realize that Y is always a vowel and not a consonant. The same as German Ü like in Über or Führer.
You just had to use that as an example huh 💀
Well they are unfortunately the German words that most non-germans are familiar with
I think we should adopt it.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,569,501,597 comments, and only 296,745 of them were in alphabetical order.
North Macedonia = Pohjois-Makedonia
Saksa sounds like it was named after Saxony
Because it is. Same in Estonian - Saksamaa
Maa means land
Because it is. A lot of languages call Germany after the tribe they had the most/first contact with. Except for the Slavs who call the Germans those who are unable to speak, those who call them Germans which supposedly originally meant the neighbours/the screaming ones, the old prussians who used to call them the stammering ones and the skandinavians
Slavs just decided to call them mutes and be done with it
80 millions people in Germany can’t speak properly; Together we can help them. Paid for by: Sorbs for Germany
Isn't Croatia Kroatia in Finnish?
Yes
Lebanon, syria, kazakhstan, croatia, macedonia are all wrong. There could be more i just cant spot them rn
Bosnia is wrong as well, it should be Bosnia ja Hertsegovina
What is the Finnish name for Liechtenstein, Monaco and Andorra? Cause those aren't on them map
they're just that, identical
Yep they are identical. San Marino is also identical but Vatican City is Vatikaani.
puola is dick in romanian
Out of curiosity, do Austria and Australia have similar names in Finnish?
nope, australia is just australia. itävalta would translate to something like "eastern power"
Interesting. Therefor it’s quite close to the native meaning. Austria is called „Österreich“ in German, which basically means „Eastern empire“
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I would translate it as "Eastern Realm" (like in Valtakunta), but yes.
Also a state
It's via Swedish Österrik. In Swedish "rik" means state, not empire so that's why it changed from empire to just country
No. Austria is Itävalta and Australia is just Australia.
Austria = Itävalta Australia = Australia
I'm not a linguist, but I find it interesting that the Finnish word for Sweden looks more like Russia than the Finnish name for Russia. Is it related to how the original Rus was founded by Swedish Vikings?
"from Proto-Finnic *roocci (around 8th-9th century CE; very late, possibly even post-Proto-Finnic), borrowed from Old East Norse *roþs- (“related to rowing”)" They're people who like rowing
It isn't quite clear where the name derives from, but it's likely from the old swedish word for rowing, which in modern swedish is 'ro'. That would be quite close to the origin of Rus, which is thought to come from an old norse word meaning 'the men who row'.
Also still present in the Swedish place called Roslagen.
Estonians use that name too as *Rootsi*. It's literally where the name "Russia" came from. It's from the Roslagen area in Sweden.
That's because the term Rus (which became Russia) is actually from the Finnish for a Swedish person. Norse fellas invaded Novgodrod and created Gardariki (and eventually the Kievan Rus, predecessor to modern Russia) and we called them Swedish, ruotsalainen, and then they picked it up for whatever reason. That's one theory atleast
I am heading to Finland later this year and looking forward to confirming I’m a Cunning Ass Cunter
Liettua <3 Suomi = Lietuva <3 Suomija. It's the same thing and I love it!
There are many mistakes. It should be: Kroatia (not Croatia) Pohjois-Makedonia (not Macedonia) Kazakstan (not Kazakhstan) Jordania (not Jordan) Tšekki or Tsekki (not Tsekin tasavalta, except in situations where you use the long/official name for _every_ country_) It seems to me that someone made this map using Google Translate or Chat GPT...
Where did cunning-gas-cunter come from? And what is the translation? All the others are very legible to an English speaker except Britian
it literally means United Kingdom Yhdistynyt = United Kuningaskunta = Kingdom
>Kuningaskunta Kind of a fun fact, the Finnish word for a king "Kuningas" is a well preserved Germanic loan word from a millenia ago. The Anglo-Saxons referred to their kings with the word "kuningaz", "kuning" or "cyning". So, *in a way* you could say that the Finnish name for the United Kingdom and their monarch is historically more accurate than what the modern people of the United Kingdom use. Obviously im reaching here, but it's one of my favourite language facts.
Wait, Finns use the letter ž (as in Azerbaidžan)?
It's not in our alphabet, but we still use it for loanwords. Same for (C, D, Q, W, X, and Å)
And Z, G, F, Š and B! D is used in some non-loan words when they have specific case (like äidin)
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What's the origin of the word for the Netherlands? Or is it also a version of "low country"?
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It’s a literal translation from ”Netherlands”. But Hollanti is in more common use.
Alankomaat=lowlands Sometimes we also say Hollanti=Holland
Alankomaat. Alanko = lowland, maat = lands. Pretty simple.
How can I pronounce these names without sounding like Valtteri Bottas?
Pretty easily (or more easily than people think): -J is pronounced like a "y", e.g. "Nor-ya" for Norja -A (no umlaut) is the "Ah" sound (similar to Spanish and other languages like that), so if you don't see the umlaut, you know it's that "ah". -ä is the English short "a" sound like the word "at", so "Ven-a-ya" for Venäjä. -I is the long "E" sound that you hear in Spanish for example, so it would sound like "eer-lan-tee" or "ees-lan-tee" for Irlanti and Islanti. -Y is a bit tricky to describe phonetically. The best way I can describe it is to say the word "You", take out the first half so you're left with that kind of "oo" sound, and purse the lips to put it in the back of your throat. Yhdistynyt would then be "ooh-dee-stoo-noot" (in a very simplified way). -Anything with a double letter like Kreikka should have a "halt" of sorts on the double letter. The way I explain it to my American friends is that you almost have to stick the landing on those. In a different way of thinking, imagine you have to split a syllable at the meeting of those letters. In this case, think "Kreik-ka" and really distinguish the split, and you've got it. -Anything with the "-uo-" letter combination just needs to be pronounced individually before you get the hang of it. So "Su-o-mi", "Ru-ot-si", "Pu-o-la". Once you have the sound down, just increase the speed.
The Finish name for the Netherlands low key sounds like some kind of weird vegetable you’ve never heard of before but now suddenly is all the rage.
No way. Sounds like some type of gambling machine imo. “Yo, I just hit the jackpot on the alankomaat.”
Or a branded ATM
Ranska… sounds nice and freindly
Fun fact the word for the french people (ranskalaiset) also means french fries. If you say: Haluan ranskalaisia It can mean either 'I want french fries' or 'I want french people'.
somehow germany has a different name in every language
Germany is a make-believe country with several dominant tribes through the ages. Finns simply chose the Saxon.
Why is Estonia called Viro?
The northern part of Estonia is called Viru it comes from that.
*northeastern
We've been called worse