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Finnish exonyms
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Below is a list of Finnish language exonyms for places in non-Finnish-speaking areas:
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Note that the Finnish language inflects place names where English use prepositions like in and to. These variants can affect any place name and are inflections, not exonyms. For example Mene Birminghamiin means Go to Birmingham.
General
Foreign place names containing a direction such as South or Upper are often translated, e.g.:
North Carolina → Pohjois-Carolina; Upper Volta → Ylä-Volta
Belgium
China
Cuba
Cyprus
Denmark
Egypt
Estonia
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 translated into Finnish as if they were Finnish words, creating an unlimited number of potentially existing exonyms. Below are only some frequently encountered examples of these, as well as those where the difference is significant.
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Finland
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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
Germany
Greece
Ancient transcriptions that do not reflect modern pronunciation are used in some cases, e.g. Herakleion ("Iraklion").
Iran
Israel
Italy
Latvia
Lebanon
Lithuania
Norway
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For further names, see Finnish exonyms for places in Norway.
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
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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 new Russian names; thus, Finnish names of Karelian places are not all strictly exonyms.
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
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Northern Sweden has a Finnish/Meänkieli-speaking minority and thus some place names are derived from Finnish, making them not exonyms. There are several more Finnish place names in this area.
Several place names of genuinely Swedish places, more than these, have been modified due to the much differing Finnish pronunciation principles. Meänkieli names have usually been slightly modified when picked up by Swedish language. Some Meänkieli names, at least closer to the mountains, were originally Sami, but were modified when picked up into Finnish.
* marks place names in traditionally Finnish/Meänkieli-speaking areas.
Syria
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
See also
References
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