The Vuo- Thread

[tuulen]

Vuo- can mean a place where water flows in two different directions, each direction then forming a watershed region, where marshes are drained by streams which flow into rivers and lakes, etc. Finland has many watershed regions, and quite often IN BETWEEN those watersheds can be found places, usually high ground including hills but sometimes low ground including lakes, and those places sometimes have a name which begins with vuo-, followed by a word ending. The trouble is that almost none of those word endings appear in ANY Finnish dictionary, not even in Nykysuomen sanakirja, and so the purpose of this thread is to discover the meaning of those word endings, please!

Let us begin with just one vuo- word: Vuotso

What is the meaning of the -tso ending?

There are many more, and each ending is different!

[Jukka Aho]

I have no idea if -tso carries any specific meaning. But you might be interested in knowing that vuo is also used in scientific contexts, such as in the word magneettivuo (“magnetic flux”).

[Rip]

Let us begin with just one vuo- word: Vuotso

What is the meaning of the -tso ending?

At least in the example in your mention it seem to come from the original Sami name

Vuotso (pohjoissaameksi Vuohčču)

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuotso

[tuulen]

I have no idea if -tso carries any specific meaning. But you might be interested in knowing that vuo is also used in scientific contexts, such as in the word magneettivuo (“magnetic flux”).

Yes, I know that because I did my homework before asking my question.

Vuo also indicates a divergence in the flow of water.

[tuulen]

Let us begin with just one vuo- word: Vuotso

What is the meaning of the -tso ending?

At least in the example in your mention it seem to come from the original Sami name

Vuotso (pohjoissaameksi Vuohčču)

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuotso

Vuotso does have two different spellings, but there is something else to consider. For instance, sometimes high ground can be between two different watersheds, and the highest ground in that region is north of Vuotso and is near Saariselkä, where there are a group of hills, right at the point of watershed division, named Aita-Vuomaselkä, Iso Vuomaselkä, Niemi-Vuomaselkä ja Pikku Vuomaselkä, all having a -ma ending, but Vuotso is between two huge reservoirs. So, what do the -ma and -tso endings mean?

This is just the beginning! There are dozens more, scattered throughout Finland. No two are the same, and they are not in any dictionary.

Vuotunki?

[EP]

Vuoma is a big treeless swamp.

[Rip]

A few picks
http://www.kotikielenseura.fi/virittaja ... 003_99.pdf

vuohvcvcu ’narrow water swamp’.-> Vuosso-, Vuotso-, Uotso
vuodâs ’sand’ -> Vuonteen[mäki]
vuovdi 'forest'
vuovda ’bird house [for collecting eggs]'
vuotna 'fjord' -> vuono

all from various sami languages. It seems they use 'vuo' at the beginning of the word much more than the Finns and I find unlikely that you will in general find meaning for the various endings taken separately. My assumption is that you're looking for a structure that isn't there and it is not really question about the Finnish language anyway, except for the final transformation which probably has added fair randomness to the mix.

[tuulen]

Vuoma is a big treeless swamp.

That makes perfect sense because that group of four vuo- hills is at the highest elevation, but is surrounded by big swamps.

Learning such details is part of the fun of learning about Finland.

[tuulen]

A few picks
http://www.kotikielenseura.fi/virittaja ... 003_99.pdf

vuohvcvcu ’narrow water swamp’.-> Vuosso-, Vuotso-, Uotso
vuodâs ’sand’ -> Vuonteen[mäki]
vuovdi 'forest'
vuovda ’bird house [for collecting eggs]'
vuotna 'fjord' -> vuono

all from various sami languages. It seems they use 'vuo' at the beginning of the word much more than the Finns and I find unlikely that you will in general find meaning for the various endings taken separately. My assumption is that you're looking for a structure that isn't there and it is not really question about the Finnish language anyway, except for the final transformation which probably has added fair randomness to the mix.

You seem to be right about my looking for a structure which does not exist, but with your help I am only now discovering that such a structure does not exist, thank you, and my excuse is that in my study of maps of Finland I kept finding more and more examples of vuo- words, nearly all of which having something to do with being between watershed regions or divergent flows of water. You also appear right about a connection to Sámi language because some vuo- words do exist in southern Finland but most of them are in northern and eastern Finland, and so perhaps they became adopted into the Finnish language from Sámi language. Yet, although I can understand or guess what some of the vuo- endings mean, my searches in Finnish dictionaries usually went nowhere, and that prompted me to post this thread as a general question about all of those unexplained vuo- words. Then again, for instance, EP just pointed out that vuoma means treeless swamp, and because I occasionally did find vuo- as having a definition in Finnish my search for answers continued.

Vuonis?

[Rip]

Final note on population and geographic of Finland. Rather little is firmly known about the pre-history of Finland, and even what happened in large parts of the country after the Swedes came and started writing things down. It is nevertheless generally accepted that the Sámi people earlier lived in more or less the whole area of Finland and even relatively recently (in time scale of several hundreds, not thousands of years) far more south than they do now, so Sámi based names even in southern Finland could be originally given by them for that specific place. Even the name Nuuksio (the national park in Espoo) is widely assumed to come from the Sami word for swan (njukča or similar in Sámi languages).

[tuulen]

Part of the reason why I continued to look for Finnish definitions of vuo- words is due to other Finnish words which do not appear in any dictionary. For instance, near Vuotso there is a hill having the name of Tuulisvaara, where tuuli means wind and tuulis apparently means windy, and so Tuulisvaara apparently means windy hill, BUT the word tuulis does not appear in any dictionary. That is one reason why I kept looking for the definitions of the many vuo- endings I found, words which appear to be Finnish but which have endings which do not appear in any dictionary. True, a Finnish vuo- word may have come from a Sámi vuo- word, but there is no easy way to know such information.

Vuotsa?