Foreign names in Finnish

Adapted forms

Names of places, people, etc. often have different forms in different languages. In English, we say “Venice” when referring to a city in Italy known as “Venezia” in Italian. In Finnish, the name is close to Italian, just in Finnish spelling: Venetsia.

There is no official list of Finnish names to be used for foreign places, buildings, people, etc. The most comprehensive general list of them is in the book Vierasnimikirja, by the author of this book. The list, with some omissions and some additions, has been included in the appendix-like section Proper names of this book.

Geographic names

For countries and places that have been known in Finland for a long time, the name used might have changed a lot from the original, such as Tukholma for Stockholm or Pietari for St. Petersburg. The name might also be of a completely different origin: Ruotsi (Sweden), Venäjä (Russia), Viro (Estonia), Saksa (Germany).

As in English, some parts of geographic names are translated, sometimes even the entire name, e.g. Tanganjikajärvi (Lake Tanganyika), Alankomaat (the Netherlands).

Place names in Russia

Many places now located in Russia have Finnish names. For the areas that were ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940 and again in 1944, it is customary to use Finnish names like Viipuri (Russian: Vyborg). Finnish names are often used also for places in East Karelia, e.g. Karhumäki (Russian: Medvezhyegorsk). Many of these names are really not foreign in Finnish; instead, the Finnish names are original and Russian names are newer, often based on the Finnish name.

There is a large compilation of these names and their Russian equivalents in the online publication Venäjän federaation paikannimiä.

Place names in other neighboring countries

Many places in northern Sweden and Norway have Finnish names given to them by local Finnish-speaking people, e.g. Jällivaara (Swedish: Gällivare) and Tromssa (Norwegian: Tromsø). Some of the Finnish names are becoming less common; e.g. Alattio in Norway is now often called by its Norwegian name Alta in Finnish texts.

Finnish forms for Estonian names have a different origin. Finnish and Estonian languages are related, and Estonian names therefore often resemble Finnish words. They have often been adapted, at least as regards to the second part of compound word, e.g. Munamäki (Estonian: Munamägi).

Personal names

The names of kings and other monarchs often have rather different form in Finnish than in English or other languages. For example, the English king names “James” and “John” are Jaakko and Juhana in Finnish. However, according to a decision by language authorities in 2002, such adaptations should not be applied to names of future monarchs. Thus, although the Philips of Spain (“Felipe” in Spanish) are still called Filip in Finnish up to Filip V, the present king of Spain should be called Felipe VI as in Spanish; the Finnish media generally follows the recommendation.

Swedish first names of notable persons of Finnish history have traditionally been used in a form adapted to Finnish, e.g. Sakari Topelius instead of Zacharias Topelius. However, there is now a tendency of using original names as “more correct”. For example, the national biography kansallisbiografia.fi uses them.

Among other personal names, very few have (mildly) adapted forms: Martti Luther (Martin Luther), Leo Tolstoi (the first name is Lev in Russian), Josif Stalin (the first name is Iosif in Russian).

Common mistranslations

It is not uncommon to see foreign names in English form (say, “Bavaria”) in news, because the text was translated from English and the translator did not know that a Finnish form (such as Baijeri) should be used. A similar mistake is that names used in English-language newsfeed are used as such even though the local name is different. For example, “Munich” is a grave mistake in Finnish texts when referring to a city in Germany; the German name München is used in Finnish.

Requirement on exact spelling

Apart from a limited set of adapted traditional names discussed above, foreign names should be written Finnish exactly as in the original language, according to language authorities. This means that all accents and other diacritic marks as well as foreign letters be retained, e.g. Bárðarbunga (not Bardarbunga).

In practice, this rule is often not followed, especially in newspapers. For example, instead of the correct Spanish name Málaga, people often write simply Malaga, which is common in English too. Even in publications that generally follow the rule, it is very common to use ss in German names that have ß in the original (e.g. Hess instead of Heß, Gauss instead of Gauß) and omit diacritic marks from Vietnamese words (e.g. dong instead of đồng). Replacing foreign letters, e.g. ð by d and þ by th in Icelandic names, can be a conscious decision, in fear of alienating effects on the reader.

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of foreign names should follow the original, according to official rules. This is very unrealistic in general, and often names as just “read as written”, according to Finnish values for letters. See Pronunciation of foreign names and phrases.

Transliterations

Names written in other writing systems need to be transliterated (romanized, written in Latin letters), and this often differs from the transliteration used in English.

There is a Finnish standard for writing Russian names. It gives a relatively good idea of the original pronunciation, when read according to Finnish rules. The scope of the standard also covers other Slavic languages written in Cyrillic letters (e.g. Bulgarian), but it is applied to them much less consistently. The following table shows the main differences between Finnish translation and common English transliteration of Russian. The first column shows the Cyrillic letter. The notation е- means that this row applies to a Cyrillic е appearing at the start of a word or after a vowel or the soft sign or the hard sign; otherwise е is transliterated as e in all systems.

For Japanese names, the modern trend is to use the same transliteration (Hepburn) as in English. An older system (with tš instead of ch, dž instead of j, š instead of sh, v instead of w, and j or i instead of y) is still in some use, especially for some words. This explains variation like Jokohama ∼ Yokohama.

For Greek names, the situation is very confused, with different authorities recommending different transliterations, e.g. Chania vs. the traditional Hania vs. current Finnish (SFS) standard Haniá. In newspapers, the transliteration of modern Greek names nowadays usually follows English practice more or less, e.g. Alexis rather than Aleksis. This generally coincides with the Greek ELOT 743 standard, which is also the current recommendation of the Institute for the languages of Finland, although the recommendation discusses place names only: Kreikan paikannimet.

For Hebrew and Yiddish, there is a Finnish standard, but it is obscure and not much known. On the other hand, it is close to common English practices. The main difference is that the Finnish standard (and practice) allows the use of j instead of y, e.g. Netanjahu ∼ Netanyahu.

For other languages, international practices are applied. In particular, Chinese is commonly written using the pinyin system, though some names are sometimes still written using an older transcription system (e.g. Mao Tse-tung instead of the pinyin Mao Zedong).