Sami Culture - Etymologies

Etymologies

For more details on this topic, see Sápmi (area).

The Sámi are often known in other languages by the exonyms Lap, Lapp, or Laplanders, but many Sami regard these as pejorative terms. Variants of the name Lapp were originally used in Sweden and Finland and, through Swedish, adopted by all major European languages: English: Lapps, German, Dutch: Lappen, Russian: лопари́ (lopari), Ukrainian: лопарі́, French: Lapons, Greek: Λάπωνες (Lápōnes), Italian: Lapponi, Polish: Lapończycy, Spanish: Lapón, Portuguese: Lapões, Turkish: Lâpon.

The first known historical mention of the Sami, naming them Fenni, was by Tacitus, about 98 CE. Variants of Finn or Fenni were in wide use in ancient times, judging from the names Fenni and Phinnoi in classical Roman and Greek works. Finn (or variants, such as skridfinn, "striding Finn") was the name originally used by Norse speakers (and their proto-Norse speaking ancestors) to refer to the Sami, as attested in the Icelandic Eddas and Norse sagas (11th to 14th centuries). The etymology is somewhat uncertain, but the consensus seems to be that it is related to Old Norse finna, from proto-Germanic *finthanan ("to find"), the logic being that the Sami, as hunter-gatherers "found" their food, rather than grow it. It has been suggested, however, that it may originally have been a more general term for "northern hunter gatherers", rather than referring exclusively to the Sami, which may explain why two Swedish runestones from the 11th century apparently refer to what is now southwestern Finland as Finland. Note that in Finnish, Finns (inhabitants of Finland), do not refer to themselves as Finns. As Old Norse gradually developed into the separate Scandinavian languages, Swedes apparently took to using Finn exclusively to refer to inhabitants of Finland, while Sami came to be called Lapps. In Norway, however, Sami were still called Finns at least until the modern era (reflected in toponyms like Finnmark, Finnsnes, Finnfjord and Finnøy) and some Northern Norwegians will still occasionally use Finn to refer to Sami people, although the Sami themselves now consider this to be a pejorative term. Finnish immigrants to Northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries were referred to as "Kvens" to distinguish them from the Sami "Finns".

The exact meaning of the term Lapp, and the reasons it came into common usage, are unknown; in modern Scandinavian languages, lapp means "a patch of cloth for mending", which may be a description of the clothing, called a gakti, that the Sámi wore. Another possible source is the Finnish word lape, which in this case means "periphery". It is unknown how the word Lapp came into the Norse language, but one of the first written mentions of the term is in the Gesta Danorum by 12th century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, who referred to the two Lappias, although he still referred to the Sami as (Skrid-)Finns. In fact, Saxo never explicitly connects the Sami with the "two Laplands". It was popularized and became the standard terminology by the work of Johannes Schefferus, Acta Lapponica (1673), but was also used earlier by Olaus Magnus in his Description of the Northern peoples (1555). There is another suggestion that it originally meant "wilds".

In Sweden and Finland, Lapp is common in place names, such as Lappi (Länsi-Suomen lääni) and Lapinlahti (Itä-Suomen lääni) in Finland; and Lapp (Stockholm County), Lappe (Södermanland) and Lappabo (Småland) in Sweden. As already mentioned, Finn is a common element in Norwegian (particularly Northern Norwegian) place names, whereas Lapp is exceedingly rare.

In the North Sámi language, láhppon olmmoš means a person who is lost (from the verb láhppot, to get lost).

Sámi refer to themselves as Sámit (the Sámis) or Sápmelaš (of Sámi kin), the word Sámi being inflected into various grammatical forms. It has been proposed that Sámi (presumably borrowed from the Proto-Finnic word), Häme (Finnish for Tavastia) (< Proto-Finnic *šämä, the second ä still being found in the archaic derivation Hämäläinen), and perhaps Suomi (Finnish for Finland) (< *sōme-/sōma-, compare suomalainen, supposedly borrowed from a Proto-Germanic source *sōma- from Proto-Baltic *sāma-, in turn borrowed from Proto-Finnic *šämä) are of the same origin and ultimately borrowed from the Baltic word *žēmē, meaning "land". The Baltic word is cognate with Slavic земля (zemlja), which also means "land". The Sámi institutions — notably the parliaments, radio and TV stations, theatres, etc. — all use the term Sámi, including when addressing outsiders in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, or English. In Norwegian, the Sámi are today referred to by the Norwegianized form same, whereas the word lapp would be considered archaic and pejorative.

Terminological issues in Finnish are somewhat different. Finns living in Finnish Lapland generally call themselves lappilainen, whereas the similar word for the Sámi people is lappalainen. This can be confusing for foreign visitors because of the similar lives Finns and Sámi people live today in Lapland. Lappalainen is also a common family name in Finland. As in the Scandinavian languages, lappalainen is often considered archaic or pejorative, and saamelainen is used instead, at least in official contexts.