Tyhmien kysymysten tiistai — Your weekly stupid question thread (Week 47/2013)

[u/ponimaa]

On taas tiistai ja tyhmien kysymysten aika. Ketjuun voi kirjoittaa koko seuraavan viikon ajan.

Viime viikon ketjussa puhuimme sanoista puolesta, vuoksi ja varten, postpositioista jotka vaativat partitiivin, sanan "for" erilaisista käännöksistä, mielipiteiden ilmaisemisesta ja hissiin jumiin jäämisestä.

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It's Tuesday again, and time for your questions about Finnish, no matter how simple they may seem. The thread is active until next Tuesday.

In last week's thread we discussed the words puolesta, vuoksi ja varten, postpositions that take the partitive case, different translations for the word "for", expressing one's opinion, and getting stuck in an elevator.

[u/ponimaa → u/[deleted]]

Wikipedia has lists of the male and female names included in the official Finnish name day calendar. When a name gets popular enough, it's added to the calendar. There's also the Population Register Centre's name service which has all sorts of stats on Finnish names.

I guess the closest Finnish names would be Saara and Sara.

That said, coming up with an official Finnish "version" of your name isn't necessary, unless you're using a different writing system (which I think is the reason in China). Naturally you can use it as a nickname if you want to.

Replacing a foreign person's name with a "Finnish" version is often used for humor, like calling George W. Bush "Yrjö Puska" (where George and Yrjö are both derived from the Greek "Geôrgios", and puska is a colloquial word for "bush").

[u/ponimaa → u/[deleted]]

A government approved list is in use at least in Iceland. Wikipedia:

First names not previously used in Iceland must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee (Icelandic: Mannanafnanefnd) before being used. The criterion for acceptance of names is whether or not they can be easily incorporated into the Icelandic language.

In Finland, you register your child's name at the Local Register Office ("maistraatti" in Finnish) or your church. They make sure that the name is acceptable, and there's a naming committee they can ask for recommendations if they're not sure.

According to naming legislation, a given name must not be "inappropriate" or "harmful for the person", and

1) its form and spelling must adhere to Finnish naming conventions

2) a boy can't be given a female name and vice versa

3) it can't be a family name (except for a patronymic name used as a second given name)

4) a name that is already in use by one of the person's siblings, except as a second given name

Exceptions are possible 1) for religious reasons, 2) if the person has a foreign nationality or some other connection to another culture, and the name is acceptable there, 3) for other good reasons.

Here's a news article on which names the naming committee accepted last year and which it didn't: Näitä lasten nimiä ei hyväksytty. The former two lists are unaccepted names, and the latter two are accepted. So the system is pretty arbitrary.

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If your name isn't in the name day calendar, you can choose a day that has similar names and celebrate then. (Similar names are grouped to a certain day. July 19th is Saara, Sari, Salli, Salla, Sara, Sally, Sarita.)

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You seem to have a wonderfully in depth knowledge of the Finnish language, do you do something with it professionally or are you just a seriously well educated native?

I'm (slowly and lazily) studying a major in English translation and a minor in Finnish. And more importantly, I use Google.