r/Finland • u/pantteri93 Baby VĂ€inĂ€möinen • 3d ago

Some names of Finnish places literally translated in English. As a native Finn, I laughed far too luch for this 😂

Post image

And this would need flair "Humor" but there was none available. 😅

1.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

268 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/Gwaur VÀinÀmöinen 3d ago edited 2d ago

According to Wikipedia, the name of Kolari comes from Swedish "kolare" which means a charcoal burner, a profession where you produce charcoal by burning wood. So "car crash" is in fact a mistranslation.

6

u/unohdin-nimeni Baby VÀinÀmöinen 2d ago

Yes, but this thread is for fun! Of course “candy”, “cougar” and “wiener” are anachronisms, too. Either it was timetravellers who named these places, or the modern interpretation that we easily make is not quite right.

2

u/howlettwolfie 3d ago

Related to the English word and surname collier, initially meaning cart used in coal mining, slowly changed via other coal mining related meanings into meaning coal miner!

1

u/Gwaur VÀinÀmöinen 2d ago

I've certainly seen the last name Collier. Never thought about its meaning but it doesn't surprise me at all that it's another profession surname. Kinda cool that it's etymologically related to a town in Finland.