Why do Finnish surnames often end with -anen or -inen?

Question

Hi! :) I've noticed that the last names of people from Finland (or of Finnish ancestry) often end in the letters "anen" or "inen". I was just curious about what this means. Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

These names identify a person as belonging to a particular family group / tribe based on the name of the patriarch of that group. They are used mostly by Finns from the eastern region of the country. See the explanations below.

Eastern Finnish Name

An early naming system developed in the eastern cultural area, perhaps already during the 1200's. The system went through the whole period of Swedish supremacy in both Savo and Karelia. It was founded on the legal conditions of the tribes in the eastern parts of Finland, and not adopted from outside as with many later systems. It was likely founded on the inner hierarchy and the system of owning and using land property as well as the right of inheritance in different families and "clans". The names were probably signs of the clans. They were mainly formed out of given names of individuals, which may have been the patriarchs of the families. The names tied together families, and showed, for example, which individuals were permitted to hunt within a certain area. One important rule was the inheritance of the names. A son-in-law accepted by the family could get the name of his father-in-law. Women stayed within the family and kept their fathers' name, even if they were married. New names developed when clans were divided. A new name developed from the name of the patriarch, or, was based on the name of the place where the new clan lived.

A characteristic of the names are the endings -nen or -inen as in Kekkonen, Laukkanen, Koponen, Laitinen, and Hartikainen. The names of women usually had the ending -tar or -tär: Kekkotar, Laukatar, Kopotar, Laititar, and Hartikatar.Usually it is possible to linguistically derive an origin to a name. The origin is irrelevant for genealogical purposes because the names came into use before there were any written sources.

The Virtanen Type

Family names reminding of the old names of the eastern type were constructed. The first part of the names are usually from nature: Virtanen (virta = stream), Nieminen (niemi = point), Salonen (salo = waste, desert), and Suominen (Suomi = Finland). Many of them are nowadays common Finnish names. It is also clear that people using these names are usually not related. Most of the Virtanen type of names were adopted from 1900 to 1910.

Published in the The Finnish American Reporter, August 2000.



5.3.1. -nen

Most of the names of this group are eastern Finnish surnames, and it has been estimated that they had been introduced in the 13th century. The origins of these names are exceptional, as they were adopted, without a model from the upper classes, by the free peasantry who lived from hunting and burn-beating of woodland. As for their contents, these collective names resemble their European counterparts: the individual name of the head of the family (Heiska/nen), a nickname (Korho/nen), an occupational name (Seppä/nen 'Smith'), the name of citizenship or tribe (Hämä/läinen 'a person from the Häme region'). The number of old eastern Finnish names ending in -nen from the 17th century at the latest that are still in use is 8803 (there is a total of some 1,300 names that can be considered as old eastern Finnish surnames). Another big group of holders of names ending in -nen is found mostly among the working and agrarian population of western Finland, where these names started to become more general in the 1870's. They were especially popular among people without previous surnames. These names had most often a nature word as the first part (Virta/nen < Fi. virta 'river', 'flood', Mäki/nen < Fi. mäki 'hill', Koski/nen < Fi. koski 'rapids', Järvi/nen < Fi. järvi 'lake'). Part of the surnames ending in -nen were originally names of dwellings (Paikkala 1988: 48-50).

The number of names ending in -nen has slightly grown since 1985, even though some rare names have been left unused. The increase is obviously solely a consequence of the Ingrian remigration. The Ingrians, whose roots are in the regions of Savo and Karelia still have a great number of old eastern Finnish names ending in -nen, with spellings that may have changed from the Finnish original to a Russian form for dialectal or other reasons. Afterwards they have been transcribed back to Finnish into a non-Finnish form (e.g. Jakimainen instead of Jaakkimainen). The Ingrians also have names which follow the eastern Finnish -nen pattern (e.g. Monikainen, Olokainen) but which have not been used in Finland previously.

Answer 2

My understanding is that this means 'son of' or 'daughter of'. Finnish and Scandanavian peoples long ago recognized that daughters were worth acknowledging too, unlike the Anglo Saxons who referred only to sons -- eg Johnson, Jackson, Thompson etc.

Answer 3

'-nen' is simply a diminutive suffix in Finnish. For example 'lintu' = bird, 'lintunen' = little bird. Analogous to English '-let' or '-ie' (as in 'eaglet', 'birdie').

Answer 4

may be just because of emphesising of what their ancesters done or where they relate to.......

Answer 5

that is just they way it is...