Sami People - 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: Lapon.

The word Lapp is defined in the Lexicon Lapponicum as "Fenn". The first known historical mention of Fenni was by Tacitus, about 98 CE. The exact meaning of this old term, and the reasons it came into common usage, are unknown; in Scandinavian languages, lapp means "a patch of cloth for mending", which may be a description of the clothing, called a gakti, that the Sámi wear. Another possible source is the Finnish word lape, which in this case means "periphery". Originally, it meant any person living in the wilderness, not only the Sámi people. It is unknown how the word Lapp came into the Norse language, but it may have been introduced by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus to distinguish between Fish-Fennians (coastal tribes) and Lap-Fennians (forest tribes), supporting the second etymology. 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". An alternative interpretation, made by the Portuguese philosopher Damião de Góis in 1540, derives Lapland from "the dumb and lazy land", because a land where no vegetables grow is lazy and does not speak.

Across the Nordic areas Lapp is common in place names, such as in Norway, e.g., Lappetjørna (Hordaland); in Finland, e.g., Lappi (Länsi-Suomen lääni) and Lapinlahti (Itä-Suomen lääni); and in Sweden, e.g., Lapp (Stockholm County), Lappe (Södermanland) and Lappabo (Småland). The noun Lapp is an indication that the Sami people and Nordic history are related to a larger ancient history of Europe.

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

The term Finn is occasionally used locally for the Sámi people in Norway, whereas local Finnish speakers are called kvæn. Finn seems to have been in much wider use in ancient times, judging from the names Fenni and Phinnoi in classical Roman and Greek works.

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.