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The Finnic or Fennic peoples, sometimes simply called Finns, are the nations who speak languages traditionally classified in the Finnic (now commonly Finno-Permic) language family, and which are thought to have originated in the region of the Volga River. The largest Finnic peoples by population are the Finns (6 million), the Estonians (1 million), the Mordvins (800,000), the Mari (570,000), the Udmurts (550,000), the Komis (330,000) and the Sami (100,000).

The scope of the terms Finn and Finnic varies by context. In the narrowest sense, they can refer to the Finns of Finland. They can also be restricted to refer to the Baltic Finns, also known as the Western Finns, which includes the Finns of Finland, Estonia, Karelia and northwestern Russia, but not the Sami. The broadest sense in the contemporary usage, and the one used in this article, includes three groups: the Baltic Finns, the Sami, and the Eastern Finns of central Russia: the Volga Finns and the Perm Finns including the Finnic peoples of the four central-Russian republics of Komi, Mari El, Mordovia and Udmurtia.

In the 19th century, the Ugrians were also considered to be a branch of Eastern Finns (as "Ugrian Finns"), but due to the theory that the Hungarian language is most closely related to the Ugrian languages and because the Hungarians are not ethnically Finns, the Ugrians are now generally excluded.

Linguistically, the situation is more complex: in particular, the unity of the Volga Finnic languages is disputed, and because of this the Permians are sometimes counted as Volga Finns and sometimes not. The distinction is a linguistic one, however, and varies between linguistic reconstructions. Linguistically also, the Finnic peoples are sometimes called Finno-Ugric, uniting them with the Hungarians, or Uralic, uniting them also with the Samoyeds, but these linguistic connections were not discovered until the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and do not underlie traditional ethnic identity.

Finnic peoples migrated westward from very approximately the Volga area into northwestern Russia and (first the Sami and then the Baltic Finns) into Scandinavia, though scholars dispute the timing. The ancestors of the Perm Finns moved north and east to the Kama and Vychegda rivers. Those Finnic peoples who remained in the Volga basin began to divide into their current diversity by the sixth century, and had coalesced into their current nations by the sixteenth.

Etymology

The name "Finn(ic)" is an ancient exonym with scarce historical references and therefore rather questionable etymology. Its probable cognates, like Fenni, Phinnoi, Finnum, and Skrithfinni / Scridefinnum appear in a few written texts starting from about two millennia ago in association with peoples of northern Europe. The first known use of this name to refer to the people of what is now Finland is in the 10th-century Old English poem "Widsith". Among the first written sources possibly designating western Finland as the "land of Finns" are also two rune stones in Sweden: one in Norrtälje Municipality, with the inscription finlont (U 582), and the other in Gotland, with the inscription finlandi (G 319 M), dating from the 11th century.

It has been suggested that the non-Uralic ethnonym "Finn" is of Germanic language origin and related to such words as finthan (Old High German) 'find', 'notice'; fanthian (Old High German) 'check', 'try'; and fendo (Old High German) and vende (Middle High German) 'pedestrian', 'wanderer'. It may thus have originated from an Old Norse word for hunter-gatherer, finn (plural finnar), which is believed to have been applied during the first millennium CE to the (pre–reindeer herding) Sami, and perhaps to other hunter-gatherers of Scandinavia. It was reportedly still used with this meaning in Norway in the 20th century. Thus there is Finnmark in Norway, which can be understood as "Sami country", but also Finnveden in Sweden, in an area that is not known to have been Finnic-speaking. The name was also applied to what is now Finland, which at the time was inhabited by "Sami" hunter-gatherers.

The Icelandic Eddas and Norse sagas (11th to 14th centuries), some of the oldest written sources probably originating from the closest proximity, use words like finnr and finnas inconsistently. However, most of the time they seem to mean northern dwellers with a mobile life style. An etymological link between the Sami and the Finland Finns (Saami and Suomi) exists in modern Uralic languages as well.

Other etymological interpretations associate the ethnonym "Finns" with fen in a more toponymical approach. Yet another theory postulates that the words finn and kven are cognates.

See also

• Chud
• Fenni
• Fenno-Scandinavia
• Finnic mythologies
• Finno-Ugric languages

References

1. "Finno-Ugric languages". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2013.
2. "Национальный состав населения по субъектам Российской Федерации". Archived from the original on 8 December 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
3. Golden, Peter B. (1994) . "The peoples of the Russian forest belt". In Sinor, Denis (ed.). The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 230. ISBN 9780521243049.
4. "The languages of Europe". Encyclopedia of European peoples, Volume 1. Infobase Publishing. 2006. p. 888. ISBN 9781438129181. Archived from the original on 19 April 2023. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
5. Goldina, Ekaterina; Goldina, Rimma (2018). "On North-Western Contacts of Perm Finns in VII–VIII Centuries". Estonian Journal of Archaeology. 22 (2): 163–180. doi:10.3176/arch.2018.2.04. S2CID 166188106.
6. Lallukka, Seppo (1990). The East Finnic minorities in the Soviet Union. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. ISBN 951-41-0616-4.
7. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, 1894, vol. IX p. 191.
8. "Uralic peoples". www.suri.ee. Archived from the original on 9 September 2021. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
9. "Archived copy". vesta.narc.fi. Archived from the original on 6 October 2007. Retrieved 15 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
10. "Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura". Sgr.fi. Archived from the original on 8 July 2004. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
11. Rygh, Oluf (1924). Norske gaardnavne: Finmarkens amt (in Norwegian) (18 ed.). Kristiania, Norge: W. C. Fabritius & sønners bogtrikkeri. pp. 1–7.
12. Lamnidis, T. C.; Majander, K.; Jeong, C.; et al. (2018).
13. Kallio, Petri 1998: Suomi(ttavia etymologioita) – Virittäjä 4 / 1998.

• Finnic peoples