Re: OT: Finns.
| From: | Andreas Johansson <andreasj@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 22:31 |
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On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
> It occurred to me today that two of the names used for the Finnish people
> might be related. "Kven" is an old name, known perhaps first from Adam of
> Bremen, 11th century. "Finn" is even older, known from Ptolemy, 2nd century
> CE. Now if "Kven", or "Kwen" or "Kwenn" was borrowed into Celtic at an early
> stage, it regularly would become "Pen" or "Penn" (except in Spain or
> Ireland). And if "Penn" was borrowed into Germanic before Grimm's Law,
> "Fenn" would result.
>
> Anybody here more in the know about this? Wikipedia tantalisingly mentions a
> theory that the two words may be cognates, but gives no reference.
Seems more than a little unlikely - why would Germanics borrow a word
for Finns from Celtic?
The usual guess is that "Finn" is related to the verb "find" (Sw.
_finna_, same in Norwegian I think?), the original Finns being nomads
who around finding their food as opposed to sedentary
Scandinavian-speakers.
--
Andreas Johansson
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
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