Finnish exonyms

Below is list of Finnish language exonyms for towns and cities in non-Finnish-speaking areas:

Albania

Azerbaijan (Azerbaidžan)

Belgium (Belgia)

Bulgaria

China (Kiina)

Cuba (Kuuba)

Cyprus (Kypros)

Denmark (Tanska)

Egypt (Egypti)

Estonia (Viro)

Estonian and Finnish are quite closely related and share many words that differ only slightly, such as saar (Estonian) and saari (Finnish) for island. Many Estonian toponyms and even people's names are simply treated in Finnish as though they were Finnish words, creating an unlimited number of potentially existing exonyms, an exhaustive list of which would be impossible as well as pointless to compile. Below are some frequently encountered examples of these, as well as those where the difference is significant.

Finland (Suomi)

Åland (Ahvenanmaa)

Åland, while a part of Finland, is monolingually Swedish as per the Autonomy Act of Åland. Finnish names for places in Åland may therefore be considered exonyms.


The following is a list of old Finnish exonyms for Åland place-names. Some of them, though not all, appear in the Finnish encyclopaedia Pieni Tietosanakirja from the late 1920s.

Elsewhere in Finland

The Swedish names for the above are commonly (if not exclusively) used in modern-day Finnish.[6] Korsnäs in Ostrobothnia should not be confused with other locations in Finland with the same name (see Korsnäs (disambiguation)).

Areas with both Finnish-, and Swedish-speaking inhabitants have endonymic place names in both languages. Due to changing demographics, some monolingually Swedish areas have historical Finnish names inherited from earlier Finnish-speaking inhabitants. For example, Molpe, a village of Korsnäs is Moikipää in Finnish.

France (Ranska)

Germany (Saksa)

Greece (Kreikka)

Ancient transcriptions that do not reflect modern pronunciation are used in some cases, e.g. Herakleion ("Iraklion").

Holy See (Vatikaanivaltio)

Indonesia

Iran

Israel

Italy (Italia)

Latvia

Lithuania (Liettua)

Luxembourg (Luxemburg)

Norway (Norja)

For further names, see : Finnish exonyms for places in Norway

The river Teno, Tana in Norwegian, defines a stretch of border between the states.

Poland (Puola)

Portugal (Portugali)

Romania

Russia (Venäjä)

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Note that Finnish was formerly an official language in the Republic of Karelia and is still widely used there, and some places in what was Finnish territory until World War II have been given totally new Russian names; thus, Finnish names of Karelian places are not all strictly exonyms.

Russia (lakes in Karelia)

Saudi Arabia (Saudi-Arabia)

Serbia

South Africa (Etelä-Afrikka)

Spain (Espanja)

Sweden (Ruotsi)

Northern Sweden has a Finnish/meänkieli-speaking minority and indeed some names are derived from Finnish, thus they are not exonyms. For Finnish place names in Northern Sweden, see Finnish exonyms (Sweden)

Switzerland (Sveitsi)

Syria (Syyria)

Ukraine (Ukraina)

United Kingdom (Iso-Britannia)

United States (Yhdysvallat)

In general

Foreign place names containing a direction such as South or Upper are often translated, e.g.:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Svenska Ortnamn i Finland, The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, see "Mariehamn"
  2. ↑ Lumpari World Water Features Database | WorldCityDB.com
  3. ↑ Verbix
  4. ↑ Suomen kunnat: Kökar
  5. ↑ http://www.genealogia.fi/seurakunnat/srk?CMD=SRK&ID=228&TYPE=HTML&LANG=EN
  6. ↑ Svenska Ortnamn i Finland, The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, see "Korsnäs" and "Liljendal".
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