The country of Finland is known by two unrelated names: , used in Finnish and, in corresponding forms, in the other Finnic languages; and Finland, a name of Old Norse origin used in Swedish and, in various forms, in most other languages. The origin of both is uncertain, and neither has an explanation that is generally accepted.
Explanations deriving Suomi from the Finnish words suo ('mire') or suomu ('scale') are of long standing but are rejected in modern scholarship on both semantic and morphological grounds. Two accounts dominate current discussion: one derives Suomi through a chain of loans between Proto-Finnic, Proto-Sámi and the Baltic languages from a Baltic word for 'land', linking it to the province name Häme and to the Sámi endonym sápmi; the other treats Suomi and sápmi as reflexes of a common Finno-Samic self-designation of unclear origin. The Old Norse element finnr behind Finland, by contrast, appears to have been a Scandinavian term for northern neighbours in general, denoting the Sámi in Norwegian usage and the inhabitants of south-western Finland in Swedish usage.
Both names originally referred only to the coastal region around Turku (Swedish: Åbo), later known as Finland Proper. From 1308 Österland ('the Eastern Land'), originally the territories east of Finland Proper, was the official designation of the eastern part of the Swedish realm; from 1464, and especially after 1500, Finland displaced it, and Österlandet appeared in official documents for the last time in 1525. The style grand duke of Finland, adopted by John III of Sweden in 1581, remained a heraldic element of the royal titulature until 1809, when the Grand Duchy of Finland became the official designation of autonomous Finland within the Russian Empire.
Etymology
Suomi Suomi is recorded as a personal name as early as 811 and as a place name in forms such as Somewesi (1323); the derivative suomalainen ('Finn') appears as the personal name Somalayni in 1340. Corresponding forms occur across the Finnic languages: Ingrian sōmi, Votic sōmi, Estonian Soome and Livonian sūom, while the Karelian, Ludic and North Sámi forms are borrowings from Finnish. Latvian sāms ('Finn') has been derived from Finnic *sōme.
The name is demonstrably old. It is an e-stem, and such stems are, with few exceptions, at least 1,500 years old; the derivative suomalainen also lacks the stem alternation found in younger names such as Lappi–lappalainen. Whether it was originally a place name or an ethnonym is unclear; before its reference widened, it denoted the region around Turku now called Finland Proper.
Older explanations connected the name with phonetically similar Finnish words: suo ('mire'), suomu ('scale', taken to allude to totemism or to prehistoric fish-skin clothing), and suoda ('to grant', hence "the land granted by God"). These are unsuitable as starting points for suomi and suomalainen, partly on grounds of word formation and partly on semantic grounds. The derivation from suo fails semantically because Finland Proper has fewer mires than the regions surrounding it, and morphologically because the remainder of the word cannot be analysed as any suitable derivational suffix.
In 1993 Jorma Koivulehto proposed that Suomi had reached Finnish through a chain of borrowings, reviving in a new form the old idea that suomi and saame are ultimately the same word: Baltic *žemē ('land') was borrowed into early Proto-Finnic as *šämä, the source of Finnish Häme; this passed into Proto-Sámi as *sǡmǡ, the source of Sámi sabme; it was borrowed back into Baltic as *sāmas; and from there into Finnic as *sōme. Repeated borrowing has to be assumed in order to account for the irregular sound correspondences between Suomi, Häme and Sámi sabme.
In 1998 instead derived Suomi independently of Häme and Sámi, from an Indo-European or pre-Baltic word for 'land' (*ǵʰom-, *gʰom-yā), or alternatively from Baltic *stō-mē, whose descendants in the modern Baltic languages mean only 'body, build' but which belongs to the same word family as German Stamm ('tribe'). Kallio's etymology was for a time the most widely accepted, but he has since abandoned it himself. It presupposes contacts between the Uralic and Proto-Indo-European proto-languages, which are now placed in the Uralic homeland far to the east rather than on the shores of the Baltic, making it difficult to explain how such a name could have travelled west and attached itself to one particular province.
It has more recently been proposed that suomi and Sámi sápmi both go back to a word *sämä of the Finno-Samic (early Proto-Finnic) proto-language, whose own origin is unclear, and that Häme is a loan from the later Proto-Sámi form of that word. Advances in the study of Uralic historical phonology underlie the proposal: if Suomi is old enough to go back to early Proto-Finnic, its form at that stage would have been *sämi, which may in turn derive from an earlier *sämä. On this account the three names still belong together, but in a different way than had been assumed, and the motivation behind the original word remains unknown. None of the proposed explanations can be regarded as certain, but neither can any of them be ruled out.
Finland The Old Norse element finnr denoted different peoples in different Scandinavian languages: in Norwegian usage it traditionally referred to the Sámi and to Lapland, whereas in Swedish usage it referred to the inhabitants of Finland Proper. A parallel has been drawn with the Germanic word behind Welsh, Walloon and Vlach, which in different Germanic languages came to designate quite different neighbouring peoples: it meant, roughly, 'those who are not us', and its various forms attached themselves to different regions and populations. The same is likely to hold for finnr and Finland.
Old village names containing the element finn- — Finne, Finby, Finböle — occur in Denmark and southern Sweden and have sometimes been taken as evidence that Finns once lived that far west. Place-name research does not support this, since Finnish-speaking settlement would be expected to have left other kinds of place names as well. The Scandinavian languages spread northwards comparatively late — some 1,500 years ago they were still spoken in Denmark and southern Sweden — and as they advanced in successive waves along the Norwegian coast and up through Sweden, the old name for the earlier inhabitants was transferred to each new set of neighbours: to the Sámi in the case of the Norwegians, and to the Finns in the case of the Swedes. As Swedish rule expanded eastward at the end of the Middle Ages, the referents of Suomi and Finland widened in step with one another.
Historical usage
Finlandia and Österland Viking Age runestones record Scandinavians who died in the east; one, in Gästrikland and dated to 1030–1050, commemorates a viking named Egil who died in Tavastland. Two inscriptions name Finland itself. U 582, now lost, stood at Söderby-Karl church in Uppland and was raised by Bjǫrn and Ígulfríðr in memory of their son Ótryggr, who "was killed in Finland" (). G 319, a grave slab at Rute church on Gotland, was made for Auðvaldr, "who died in Finland" (). That so few runestones commemorate deaths in Finland may indicate that expeditions there were successful and casualties few, or simply that they were raised at a time when runestones were already going out of fashion.
Finlandia, the Latin name for Finland, began to appear in the titles of the bishops of Åbo from 1221 and denoted the south-western provinces around Åbo (Turku). As the lands east of Åbo were incorporated into Sweden, the official designation Österlanden, later Österlandet ('the Eastern Land'), was introduced in 1308 and became established particularly after the 1330s, covering the territories east of what was then called Finland. From 1464, and especially after 1500, Finland came to be used for the whole area; Österlandet appeared in official documents for the last time in 1525, in a charter granted by Gustav Vasa.
The shift was more than terminological. As Finland replaced Österlandet in the later 15th century, the older province-based designations for the inhabitants — nylänningar, tavaster, karelare, savolaxare and bottningar — could be replaced by finnar ('Finns'), a word that at the time carried no linguistic meaning and covered the Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking populations alike.
Duchy and Grand Duchy
Finlandia also appeared in secular Swedish offices. The highest was dux Finlandiae, duke of Finland, attested from the end of the 13th century and normally held by a member of the royal house who did not live in Finland at all. Next in rank was the praefectus or advocatus Finlandiae, the governor or bailiff of Finland and the highest Swedish office-holder resident in the country, and his military counterpart the capitaneus terrae Finlandensis, commander of Finland. Bengt Birgersson, son of Birger Jarl, was duke of Finland in 1284–1291, as was Valdemar Magnusson, son of Magnus Ladulås, in 1302–1317. The extent of this duchy is unknown, but Finland at that time meant Finland Proper.
In 1518 Johannes Magnus used the heightened form Magnus Ducatus Finlandiae, 'Grand Duchy of Finland', in a letter to the Polish historian Maciej Miechowita; he was among the first to express in writing the view that Finland was something more than a Swedish region. Gustav Vasa in turn repeated the medieval idea that Finland was a duchy, Ducatus Finlandiae, in his letters abroad, among them a letter to the pope in 1523. In 1556 Gustav Vasa granted his son Johan the counties of Åbo and Kumogård together with Åland as a hereditary fief, to which Raseborg county was added in 1557; the duchy was taken from him again in 1563, and his own son Johan bore the ducal title in 1594–1606.
To assert himself against the tsar and grand prince of Moscow, Johan, by then King John III, assumed the title grand duke of Finland in 1581, and it was borne by all his successors until 1809; Finland's lion arms were created at the same time. The grand duchy received no defined borders during the Swedish period. Gustavus Adolphus bore the title as heir to the throne, as did , the younger son of Gustav IV Adolf, in 1802–1805.
From 1809 Grand Duchy of Finland became the official designation of autonomous Finland within the Russian Empire. The grand duchy thereby changed from a purely heraldic concept in the royal titulature into one denoting a concrete administrative and political entity. It remained the country's official name until 1917 and was formally abolished in 1919.
Historical cartographic delimitation Although the grand-ducal title was instituted in 1581, it took almost a century before a delimited Grand Duchy of Finland appeared in cartographic material. It first occurs on a map made in 1662 by the Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu, but the image is internally contradictory: the colouring suggests a boundary running from the Neva to the Kalix River, while the accompanying series of coats of arms omits both Kexholm county and Åland. The Swedish central government's own appointments to office were likewise mutually inconsistent during the 17th century as to which areas were counted as belonging to the Grand Duchy.
On Swedish national maps a delimited Grand Duchy of Finland was entirely absent until the 1790s. The Land Survey's national map of 1747 instead labels "Finland" as one of the realm's main divisions, on a par with the unclassified Norrland.
In Relation to Ostrobothnia, Åland, and Karelia