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The Finnic or Fennic peoples, sometimes simply called Finns, are the nations who speak languages related to the Finnish language, and which are thought to have originated in the region of the Volga River.

The scope of the term Finnic peoples varies by context. It often refers to the Baltic Finns, which include the Baltic Finnic speaking peoples of Finland, Estonia, Karelia and northwestern Russia. It may also include other Finno-Ugric peoples, especially the Volga Finns. The broadest sense in the contemporary usage coincides with the Finnic or Finno-Permic language group and includes four groups of contemporary peoples: the Baltic Finns, the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia, the Volga Finns (the Mari and the Mordvins) and the Permians or the Perm Finns (the Komi and the Udmurts).

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the terms Finn, Finnic and Finnish obtained even broader connotations, and were sometimes used synonymously with Finno-Ugric to include also the Hungarians and the Ob-Ugrians as "Ugrian Finns". The Samoyeds were also sometimes included. Even broader usages based on hypothetical and now generally rejected language families such as Ural-Altaic were also suggested. Such schemes classified e.g. Turkic peoples as 'Finns'. Such usage is not common anymore, and Finno-Ugric peoples and the Samoyeds together are typically called Uralic peoples instead.

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 Sámi (100,000).

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The name "Finn(ic)" is an ancient exonym with scarce historical references and therefore rather questionable etymology.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.

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
• Fennoscandia
• Finnic mythologies
• Finno-Ugric languages

References

1. "Finno-Ugric languages". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2013.
2. "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.
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. 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.
5. Lallukka, Seppo (1990). The East Finnic minorities in the Soviet Union. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. ISBN 951-41-0616-4.
6. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, 1894, vol. IX p. 191.
7. "Finland" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
8. Art Leete, Ways of Describing Nenets and Khanty "Character" in 19th Century Russian Ethnographic Literature, Folklore vol. 12., December 1999
9. ^ Dillingham, William Paul; Folkmar, Daniel; Folkmar, Elnora (1911). Dictionary of Races or Peoples. United States. Immigration Commission (1907–1910). Washington, D.C.: Washington, Government Printing Office. pp. 58–61.
10. "Uralic peoples". www.suri.ee. Archived from the original on 9 September 2021. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
11. "Национальный состав населения по субъектам Российской Федерации". Archived from the original on 8 December 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
12. "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)
13. "Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura". Sgr.fi. Archived from the original on 8 July 2004. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
14. Rygh, Oluf (1924). Norske gaardnavne: Finmarkens amt (in Norwegian) (18 ed.). Kristiania, Norge: W. C. Fabritius & sønners bogtrikkeri. pp. 1–7.
15. Lamnidis, T. C.; Majander, K.; Jeong, C.; et al. (2018).
16. Kallio, Petri (4 January 1998). "Suomi(ttavia etymologioita)". Virittäjä (in Finnish). 102 (4): 613. ISSN 2242-8828.

• Finnic peoples