From: Erkki Kolehmainen (erkki.kolehmainen@kotus.fi)
Date: Tue Nov 08 2005 - 10:11:46 CST
FYI: Åland is "Ahvenanmaa" in Finnish. Å is the English "river" in Swedish.
Regards, Erkki
Philippe Verdy wrote:
> From: "Marion Gunn" <mgunn@egt.ie>
>
>> Scríobh Hans Aberg:
>>
>>>
>>> Or "groups of islands" (and a province): sorry I did not think of
>>> that. My Bonnier's Encyclopedia from 1967 suggests that the word
>>> Åland comes from Primitive Norse: either Ahwiland, "land of island",
>>> or "Ahvaland", "land of water"....
>>
>>
>> That makes sense. How interesting! The Irish word for 'river' is 'abha',
>> with historical pronunciationa like both 'ahva' and 'ahwa' - until
>> now, I had not considered a Norse association for that particular word.
>
>
> And what is the origin of the name of the "Oland" islands (part of the
> Swedish territory, and that has a very similar prununciation, and not
> very far to the South of Åland Islands in the Baltic sea) when you know
> that many people in Åland speak Swedish preferably to Finnish?
>
> Is there really a difference of pronunciation between Oland and Åland in
> Swedish ? May this justify the fact that Ålanders prefer not speaking
> about Åland Islands, due to possible confusion with the Swedish Oland
> Islands in oral speech ?
>
>
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