Best Finnish Driver

[damjan.cule]

no doubt, Kimi Räikkönen

[ScuderiaPham24]

Hakkinen, Rosberg?!

[Steno]

I'm not really sure myself either. I've never heard about that "son of" explanation so I don't know if it applies to Finnish names. There are many Finnish surnames which are real words meaning something and then there's sometimes just -nen added to them. What I think is that the -nen suffix softens the name so it fluids better and it's easier to say it.

Didn't know that i just thought it was the same as the other scandinavian countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Btw, if the surnames are real words, what does Raikko, Heikki and Hakki mean?

[AzShadow]

I said that many surnames are real words, but in these cases Raikko, Hakki and Kovalai don't mean anything, though. So I don't know who's made them up.

Still, for example in the most common Finnish surname "Virtanen", "virta" means "flow", and there are also surnames with just the "Virta" part. So in that sense I think that the -nen suffix is there only to soften the name.

[reprep]

well i am saying some completly different


i say Jyrki Juhani Järvilehto

J J Lehto

[D71J]

Mika was the best for sure, but now I think Hamilton is, dispite his lack of experience.

[Carterdoki]

Mika!!

[AzShadow]

Mika was the best for sure, but now I think Hamilton is, dispite his lack of experience.

Oh, didn't know that Hamilton is a Finn too.

[iceman1]

I did my Research and found this

No, it's not an equivalent of "son". In some parts of Finland (around Häme and Pohjanmaa) this kind of -son structure was used a long time ago, but that looks completely different: for example "son of Heikki" would be "Heikinpoika".

The -nen ending has a different kind of etymology. It originates from a region called Savo, where it was traditionally used as a name of a house or a farm (or a piece of land); the first resident, the builder of a house, gave his name to the farm and added the -nen -ending, and later on all the residents had also this house-name added into their name (to separate all the same named people). So usually when it was the oldest son who inherited the land and house, also the name stuck like modern surnames; but if for some reason someone from other house moved in, he also got his "surname" changed... But mostly these "house names" stuck like surnames because of this tradition.

Major part of the Finnish population was without surnames until the late 1800's. Then it was decided that it would be a good idea to get this surname thing official and everyone should have one. For the base of this new naming legislation (which was finally written as a first naming-law in 1921) the traditions from the Savo-region were taken, because it was already well stabilised and more formal than the "-son" -endings in some other parts. Many people had to invent new surnames at that time, and a common way to do it was to take a nice Finnish word and just stick the -nen in the end. This is how the most common Finnish surnames, like "Virtanen" and "Järvinen" were formed (virta translates as a stream and järvi means a lake). So, this is where the -nen ending comes from, and this is why it actually doesn't really mean anything (like son or anything else).

[phil1993]

I did my Research and found this

No, it's not an equivalent of "son". In some parts of Finland (around Häme and Pohjanmaa) this kind of -son structure was used a long time ago, but that looks completely different: for example "son of Heikki" would be "Heikinpoika".

The -nen ending has a different kind of etymology. It originates from a region called Savo, where it was traditionally used as a name of a house or a farm (or a piece of land); the first resident, the builder of a house, gave his name to the farm and added the -nen -ending, and later on all the residents had also this house-name added into their name (to separate all the same named people). So usually when it was the oldest son who inherited the land and house, also the name stuck like modern surnames; but if for some reason someone from other house moved in, he also got his "surname" changed... But mostly these "house names" stuck like surnames because of this tradition.

Major part of the Finnish population was without surnames until the late 1800's. Then it was decided that it would be a good idea to get this surname thing official and everyone should have one. For the base of this new naming legislation (which was finally written as a first naming-law in 1921) the traditions from the Savo-region were taken, because it was already well stabilised and more formal than the "-son" -endings in some other parts. Many people had to invent new surnames at that time, and a common way to do it was to take a nice Finnish word and just stick the -nen in the end. This is how the most common Finnish surnames, like "Virtanen" and "Järvinen" were formed (virta translates as a stream and järvi means a lake). So, this is where the -nen ending comes from, and this is why it actually doesn't really mean anything (like son or anything else).

someone has been doing their research :cheezy:

[chris-da-champ]

my favorite finnish driver is heikki, its very rare seeing him doing mistakes in a race and his basic speed is incredible

[TontsaH]

My favourite is Kimi Räikkönen.

[kirai]

Kimi Raikkonen, you'll see he can show us also with statistics.

[Jeeves]

I think they're all jolly good.

[smylas]

Kimi Raikkonen