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Document Details :

Title: Finnish Names of Cultivated Lands
Author(s): AINIALE, Terhi
Journal: Onoma
Volume: 37    Date: 2002   
Pages: 181-188
DOI: 10.2143/ONO.37.0.519190

Abstract :
In Finnish onomastics, place-names have been traditionally divided into two main groups: allure names and nature names. The culture names include, besides the names of settlements and artefacts, the names of cultivated lands. The names of cultivated lands had a central position among the place-names in agrarian Finland until the middle of the 20th century-their share of the traditional Finnish place-names in the countryside was approximately a quarter. After that, the number and proportion of the names of cultivated lands have clearly decreased, and most of the names of cultivated lands in the present countryside belong not only to the most rapidly disappearing names, but also to names that people know and use the least. Most of the names of cultivated lands are micro-toponyms, names used by small groups. The structure of the basic type of the names of cultivated lands is similar to that of other Finnish place-names, i.e. a two-part name, the basic part of which refers to the type of the place and the qualifying part which in some way describes the place. However, the percentage of names of cultivated lands with a basic two-part structure is even greater than this percentage is of all place-names. The most common basis for naming a place is its location.

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