Notes on the table of proper names

The following table presents forms of foreign names used in Finnish, with their English equivalents and some explanations. Note in particular that many of the correspondences given apply in limited contexts only, as noted in the third column. For example, the Finnish word Paavali is used for Apostle Paul, for popes with Paul (Latin Paulus) in their name, and for Russian czars Paul (Russian Pavel). Otherwise Paavali is just a Finnish name, and e.g. Paul or Pavel as a British or Russian name is used as such in Finnish. (However, important persons in Finland’s history have often had their first name adapted, e.g. using Paavali instead of the Swedish name Paul or its Latinized version Paulus. The practices are varying now, e.g. Paavali ∼ Paulus ∼ Paul Juusten.)

The table is based on information compiled by the author originally for the Finnish book Vierasnimikirja, which was later published online as Vieras­nimi­kirja, 2. laitos. Due to different purposes of the books, the material has been rearranged and modified. In particular, the table is in alphabetic order by Finnish form.

Some expressions that are derivations of proper names in Finnish have been included, due to their treatment as proper names in English and other languages.

Names have been included for different reasons:

• Some names have a special form in Finnish, different from any other language, e.g. Kööpenhamina for Copenhagen.
• Some names appear in Finnish in the original form but in English in some other form. E.g. for Munich, Finnish uses the German form München.
• Some names, though spelled as in the original language, have special pronunciation or inflection in Finnish. The first column of the table contains pronunciation information in brackets and, when relevant, the genitive form to describe the inflection. For geographic names, the locational case inessive or adessive is shown, to indicate whether inner or outer cases are used.

The table does not contain names that appear in different forms when such variation does not specifically relate to Finnish, e.g. the question whether to use Burma or Myanmar. Neither does the table contain general variation in transliterations, e.g. the use on pinyin versus older systems for Chinese, as in Mao Zedong versus the older Mao Tse-tung. Regarding Finnish transliterations of Russian and Greek names, only some common names are given here.

The table is in modern Finnish alphabetic order (a, b, ..., v, w, x, y, z, å, ä, ö).