The origin of the name Kainuu has been disputed among Finnish historians and linguistics. Kainuu is a region of Finland. The reason for the controversy is the speculated connection between areas known as Kainuu and Kvenland, both historical lands in Fennoscandia.
As a part of his theory about the origin of the name "kven", Jouko Vahtola, a professor of history at Oulu University, suggested that the name "kainuu" had the same origin. Vahtola constructed a hypothetical proto-Germanic word "*χwainō" that meant "swampy land" (related to English whin ). [1] [2] *χwainō derives from Proto-Indo-European *ḱʷeyn-, so the borrowing might have happened early on, but there is no evidence that the word "kainuu" was ever used to mean "swampy land" in any Finnish dialect. [3]
Jorma Koivulehto, Professor of Germanic Philology at the University of Helsinki, has proposed that "kainuu" was originally the same as "*gain-", a Germanic word for a hole or mouth. With the meaning "water-route" or "water-body", *Kainu- was originally a toponymic prefix in southwestern Finland, and during the Iron Age it was gradually established as the name of the land surrounding the northern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. [4] Linguistically this etymology is seen as more acceptable. [3] The area originally known as Kainuu seems to have been the central part of Ostrobothnia where Karelians had access to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Middle Ages.
Noteworthy in this context is the word "kainu", which is used only in lower Satakunta in Finland. It had a completely different meaning, referring to the middle stake in a work sled, but also clearly derives from *gain-.
There are words in Sami languages that sound similar to "kainuu". In North Samic, Gáidnu is a rope made of roots for boats or fishing nets; Gáidnulaŝ refers to a clumsy person; and Geaidnu is a road or a way. [5] In a Saami dictionary of 1780, Kainolats had the meaning "Norwegian or Swedish man" while Kainalats had the meaning "Norwegian or Swedish woman", though it could also have the meaning "peasant". Helsingby or Torneå was referred to as Cainho. [6] These words seem to stem from Proto-Samic keajnō , "road, way, means, method".
The Gulf of Bothnia is divided into the Bothnian Bay and Bothnian Sea, and it is the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea, between Finland's west coast and the Sweden's east coast. In the south of the gulf lies Åland, between the Sea of Åland and the Archipelago Sea.
Ostrobothnia, Swedish: Österbotten, Finnish: Pohjanmaa is a historical province comprising a large western and northern part of modern Finland. It is bounded by Karelia, Savonia, Tavastia and Satakunta in the south, the Bothnian Sea, Bothnian Bay and Swedish Westrobothnia in the west, Laponia in the north and Russia in the east.
Kvenland, known as Cwenland, Qwenland, Kænland, and similar terms in medieval sources, is an ancient name for an area in Fennoscandia and Scandinavia. Kvenland, in that or nearly that spelling, is known from an Old English account written in the 9th century, which used information provided by Norwegian adventurer and traveler Ohthere, and from Nordic sources, primarily Icelandic. A possible additional source was written in the modern-day area of Norway. All known Nordic sources date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Other possible references to Kvenland by other names and spellings are also discussed here.
Kvens are a Balto-Finnic ethnic minority in Norway. They are descended from Finnish peasants and fishermen who emigrated from the northern parts of Finland and Sweden to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1996, Kvens were granted minority status in Norway, and in 2005 the Kven language was recognized as a minority language in Norway.
Finns or Finnish people are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland.
The Sámi people are an indigenous people of northern Europe inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The traditional Sámi lifestyle, dominated by hunting, fishing and trading, was preserved until the Late Middle Ages, when the modern structures of the Nordic countries were established.
Proto-Norse was an Indo-European language spoken in Scandinavia that is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect of Proto-Germanic in the first centuries CE. It is the earliest stage of a characteristically North Germanic language, and the language attested in the oldest Scandinavian Elder Futhark inscriptions, spoken from around the 2nd to the 8th centuries CE. It evolved into the dialects of Old Norse at the beginning of the Viking Age around 800 CE, which later themselves evolved into the modern North Germanic languages.
Indo-Uralic is a controversial hypothetical language family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic.
The Kven language is a Finnic language or a group of Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost parts of Norway by the Kven people. For political and historical reasons, it received the status of a minority language in 2005 within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Linguistically, however, it is seen as a mutually intelligible dialect of the Finnish language, and grouped together with the Peräpohjola dialects such as Meänkieli, spoken in Torne Valley in Sweden. While it is often considered a dialect in Finland, it is officially recognized as a minority language in Norway and some Kven people consider it a separate language.
Because of Germany's long history before 1871 as a non-united region of distinct tribes and states, there are many widely varying names of Germany in different languages, more so than for any other European nation. For example, in the German language, the country is known as Deutschland from the Old High German diutisc, in Arabic as Almania (ألمانيا), in Spanish as Alemania and in French as Allemagne from the name of the Alamanni tribe, in Italian as Germania from the Latin Germania, in Polish as Niemcy from the Proto-Slavic nemets, and in Finnish and Estonian as Saksa and Saksamaa respectively from the name of the Saxon tribe.
The term man and words derived from it can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their sex or age. In traditional usage, man itself refers to the species or to humanity (mankind) as a whole.
The origin of the name Kven is unclear. The name appears for the first time in a 9th-century Old English version, written by King Alfred of Wessex, of a work by the Roman author Orosius, in the plural form Cwenas.
The Kven Sea is mentioned as the northern border for the ancient Germania in "The Old English Orosius", the history of the world published in England in 890 CE with a commission from King Alfred the Great himself. The word "kven" most likely comes after the Kven people, implied that they have used the area fairly extensive.
The ethnonyms for the Poles (people) and Poland include endonyms and exonyms. Endonyms and most exonyms for Poles and Poland derive from the name of the West Slavic tribe of Polans (Polanie), while in some languages the exonyms for Poland to derive from the name of another tribe – the Lendians (Lędzianie).
The word witch derives from the Old English nouns wiċċa[ˈwit.t͡ʃɑ] and wiċċe[ˈwit.t͡ʃe]. The word's further origins in Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European are unclear.
Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian county Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent.
Sámi languages, in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe. There are, depending on the nature and terms of division, ten or more Sami languages. Several spellings have been used for the Sámi languages, including Sámi, Sami, Saami, Saame, Sámic, Samic and Saamic, as well as the exonyms Lappish and Lappic. The last two, along with the term Lapp, are now often considered pejorative.
Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate refers to substratum loanwords from unidentified non-Indo-European and non-Uralic languages that are found in various Finno-Ugric languages, most notably Sami. The presence of Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami languages was demonstrated by Ante Aikio. Janne Saarikivi points out that similar substrate words are present in Finnic languages as well, but in much smaller numbers.
Kainuu people are Eastern Finnish inhabitants of the Kainuu region.