Aurinko

[Armkhach]

Can anyone please tell me the etymology of the word "aurinko"?
Thanks!

[onkko]

No, origins of word aurinko are unclear.

[EP]

I only have a small etymological dictionary. It only gives: aurinko, in distantly related languages (doesn´t mention which one(s) flame , embers

I guess that is originated from some proto-Finnish or proto-Ugric.

[Jukka Aho]

Can anyone please tell me the etymology of the word "aurinko"?

I don’t have a copy of the book, but this post on another forum quotes the etymological dictionary Suomen sanojen alkuperä on the topic. According to the quoted excerpt, there are some theories but they’re dubious and forced at best. The etymology of this word is not really known.

[silk]

Can anyone please tell me the etymology of the word "aurinko"?
Thanks!

According to this etymological dictionary, the origin of the word aurinko is Finnic-Permic.

And here is a link to the wiki article on Finno-Permic languages.

[Rob A.]

Well...I found this....

http://www.helsinki.fi/~ridderst/ridder ... urinko.pdf

....it's interesting, but doesn't seem to be the work of a professional linguist.... Creditable linguists when they analyze these things will only take them as far as they can without getting into idle speculation..... Us amateurs can do what we like....

As for me, I'm seeing possible connections with Latin words like "aura" and "aurum"....which, of course, are really Greek words, and, no doubt, can be traced back further, and possibly will have a Proto Indo-European root.....

Because aurinko will be such an old word in the broader Finno-Ugric lexicon....I'm speculating it's another of those words like nimi and vesi that hint at connections, thousands of years old, between PIE and Proto-Finno-Ugric....but, hey, I have no credibility anyway....

....and while I'm at it, I found a "connection" between Finnish and Old English... :

Right at the beginning, in the second line of Beowulf...plain as day, ....a Finnish word appears among all the impossible-to-understand Old English words....

"Hwät! we Gâr-Dena in geâr-dagum
þeód-cyninga þrym gefrunon,"

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/8 ... .htm#fittI

[Jukka Aho]

Well...I found this....

http://www.helsinki.fi/~ridderst/ridder ... urinko.pdf

....it's interesting, but doesn't seem to be the work of a professional linguist....

Here’s her homepage.

She’s speculating the word might come from the Finnish aura, “plow”. The rationale being, ancient Finns might have thought the Sun “plows” the skies on its daily course, or is drawn with horses as if it was a plow.

[Upphew]

She’s speculating the word might come from the Finnish aura, “plow”. The rationale being, ancient Finns might have thought the Sun “plows” the skies on its daily course, or is drawn with horses as if it was a plow.

But ancient Finns didn't use plow...

"Manner-Euroopan sotakirveskansat harjoittivat maanviljelyä ja karjanhoitoa. Suomeen sotakirveskansan väestöä saapui Baltian kautta. Suomen kielen sanat ohra, härkä, jäärä, kili, oinas, villa, vuohi, vohla, vuona ja paimen ovat balttilaisia lainoja. Siksi on ajateltu maatalouden alun Suomessa ajoittuvan sotakirvesväestön tuloon."

So if farming started when people form Baltics came, then the word aurinko should have it's roots there too? Hunter-gatherers wouldn't associate sun with plow?

[mrjimsfc]

Aura/aurum in Latin/Greek meant gold. We hear refference to the golden sun all the time.

[Rob A.]

She’s speculating the word might come from the Finnish aura, “plow”. The rationale being, ancient Finns might have thought the Sun “plows” the skies on its daily course, or is drawn with horses as if it was a plow.

But ancient Finns didn't use plow...

"Manner-Euroopan sotakirveskansat harjoittivat maanviljelyä ja karjanhoitoa. Suomeen sotakirveskansan väestöä saapui Baltian kautta. Suomen kielen sanat ohra, härkä, jäärä, kili, oinas, villa, vuohi, vohla, vuona ja paimen ovat balttilaisia lainoja. Siksi on ajateltu maatalouden alun Suomessa ajoittuvan sotakirvesväestön tuloon."

So if farming started when people form Baltics came, then the word aurinko should have it's roots there too? Hunter-gatherers wouldn't associate sun with plow?

Well....that appears to be part of her hypothesis. ....that the word aurinko is actually a replacement word, borrowed after the ancient Finns adopted the plow. On the surface it is difficult to easily accept that people would change the name of something as important as the "sun"...but apparently aurinko wasn't the word used in the more remote parts of the "Finnic" world...as best as I can interpret it, they were using the word Päivä....i.e. Kalevala and all that....though this isn't all that convincing to me...with English you can use the word "day" as a kind of alternate world for "sun"... Maybe it suggests that the word was brought in by newly arriving settlers???

I think what she is saying is very interesting, but apparently the professional linguists have not reached the same conclusions....or, at least not with any degree of consensus... Part of her "support" is other -inko nouns that have been derived from verbs.... tasinko from tasata; ahdinko from ahdistaa; and vahinko from vahingoittaa.... I suppose this would not be enough for the linguist....you would probably need more strong examples, plus any -inko examples that have been derived in different ways.

....but I don't know enough Finnish to pursue this further...perhaps someone wants to turn their mind to this, by considering the nature of words ending in -inko ...the type of typical stem word; ....whether -inko is equivalent, or somewhat equivalent, to some other more common suffix; ....how the word aurinko might be used in old stories [i.e. is the analogy of a "plow", or a "chariot" or such, used?....]...etc.....

[AldenG]

...vahinko from vahingoittaa.... I suppose this would not be enough for the linguist....

Well I'm not (even) a linguist. So maybe that's why my knee jerks on this one.

Isn't that more likely to be backwards? I don't know exactly where to mark the beginning of the ending on vahingoittaa, but isn't this the epitome of a verb in which the ending has been used to transform a noun into a verb? And yet the person to whom you refer seems to be claiming vahinko as an example of transforming a verb into a noun.

As I'm an admittedly and even proudly example-centric reasoner, maybe there are examples that will immediately show me the error of my ways. But I have a very hard time seeing vahinko as derived from vahingoittaa and not the other way around. To me it sounds like claiming that the word terror is derived from terrorize. It almost sounds like a straight-faced joke, a humorous absurdity deliberately tossed into an otherwise serious list of examples.

[Rob A.]

...vahinko from vahingoittaa.... I suppose this would not be enough for the linguist....

Well I'm not (even) a linguist. So maybe that's why my knee jerks on this one.

Isn't that more likely to be backwards? I don't know exactly where to mark the beginning of the ending on vahingoittaa, but isn't this the epitome of a verb in which the ending has been used to transform a noun into a verb? And yet the person to whom you refer seems to be claiming vahinko as an example of transforming a verb into a noun.

As I'm an admittedly and even proudly example-centric reasoner, maybe there are examples that will immediately show me the error of my ways. But I have a very hard time seeing vahinko as derived from vahingoittaa and not the other way around. To me it sounds like claiming that the word terror is derived from terrorize. It almost sounds like a straight-faced joke, a humorous absurdity deliberately tossed into an otherwise serious list of examples.

While I didn't take it as far...I kind of sensed that vahinko/vahingoittaa were not following the same pattern.... It is my impression that linguists and, in this case, grammarians, would look for a "tighter fit" in these kinds of word relationships before attempting to draw conclusions....

Any other words ending in -inko for me to think about???? ....

[AldenG]

Any other words ending in -inko for me to think about???? ....

Offhand, the first one that comes to mind is osinko (from osa), meaning "dividend."

Can't think of any others at the moment.

I have a Swedish reverse dictionary (alphabetized by words spelled backwards) but I don't think I have a Finnish one.

[Rob A.]

Any other words ending in -inko for me to think about???? ....

Offhand, the first one that comes to mind is osinko (from osa), meaning "dividend."

Can't think of any others at the moment.

I have a Swedish reverse dictionary (alphabetized by words spelled backwards) but I don't think I have a Finnish one.

Well, I did look around a bit and, to my surprise... ...I did find another "candidate" for the "Aurinko Test".... sinko from the verb singota.... there were a few other possibilities, but they were either more recently borrowed words, or words involving the question clitic....

So it seems Ms. Ridderstad's hypothesis still remains plausible, if not yet compelling ...

We probably need either another seven or eight good examples, or a "knock-out punch"....

[priimus]

i watched some hours ago sunrise and thought how important the sun has been for human for thousands of years, and especially in those times, when people didn't know that sun is just a general star, which is fortunately (very) near to us. in estonian we call sun päike, the words päike and päev=päivä are closely related, suffix -ke means something little and cute - sun gave them days and they had to appreciate it.
i have learned little bit finnish and i know that the main things in life are called with same words, for example vesi, tuli, meri and so on.. but surprisingly, words for sun are different. i started to think about the finnish word aurinko and read this topic and now i want to add, how an estonian may interpret this word.

au+rinko au means in estonian honour, but in finnish auvo, autuus bliss. and rinko.. in estonian there's a borrowed word ring, which has the same meaning in english. there's also a borrowed word rõngas, the finnish word is rengas. so, rinko = rengas?
in that way, aurinko has definitely a great meaning.