Talk:Regions of Finland

Numbering
In Mozilla (version 1.1) I am seeing the numbers of the regions in the list off by one, with Lapland being marked as "2", not "1". In IE, the numbering is correct. I wonder if it can be fixed. Nyh 10:22, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'am running Mozilla 1.7.2 and it looks ok for me. -- Jniemenmaa 07:58, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Name of maakunta
There is some variation in the English names of Finnish regions. The list that I got from Kielitoimisto in August 2001 is slightly different from the one given here:

Uusimaa Varsinais-Suomi Itä-Uusimaa Satakunta Kanta-Häme Pirkanmaa Päijät-Häme Kymenlaakso South Karelia Etelä-Savo Pohjois-Savo North Karelia Central Finland South Ostrobothnia Ostrobothnia Central Osrobothnia North Ostrobothnia Kainuu Lapland Åland

Mikko Silvonen 19:47 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I got the list(s) from the Maakuntien Liitot webpage.
 * For the reference, this is what I could find on the kielitoimisto website, was it this you ment?
 * Muutamaa sovinnaisnimeä lukuun ottamatta maakuntien nimet kirjoitetaan vieraskielisiin teksteihin suomeksi. Poikkeuksena on Ahvenanmaa, joka on paikallisen kielen mukaan Åland. Sovinnaisnimiä ovat kuhunkin kieleen vakiintuneet omat kansalliset muodot ulkomaiden paikannimistä. Tällaisia nimiä ovat esim. englannin kielessä Karelia (Karjala), Ostrobothnia (Pohjanmaa) ja Lapland (Lappi).
 * -- Jniemenmaa 08:58 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Could I put in a request that Varsinais-Suomi remains as Varsinais-Suomi? I ask because I've just come across a research paper which translates Varsinais-Suomi as Finland Proper. I was so surprised that I checked Wikipedia and found that this seems to be the translation that many people use. Now I'm not trying to be like King Canute and try to hold the tide back, but can we look at what "Finland Proper" means to the average English speaker - it means the main part of Finland, possibly excluding the more exotic bits. (Would Lapland be part of Finland Proper?) My own country (Scotland) has lots of place-names that would look equally ridiculous if literally translated. Please let's stick with Varsinais-Suomi. - m. Malcolmrutter (talk) 16:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Finnish translations
Which grammatical form to use?

Grammatical forms used in explanatory translations are often confusing. Which grammatical form should be used for these annotations to be instructive? In some languages—such as Finnish—words may change their appearance dramatically when inflected. Does an English or Int'l reader appreciate that (the) areas are alueet (nominative plural) in Finnish while some areas are muutama alueita (partitive plural)? I'd like to suggest to consistently use the basic grammatical form when translating terms into other languages: nominative singular for nouns, infinitive (I) for verbs.

The introductory sentence of this Provinces of Finland-article reads "The state of Finland consists of 6 provinces". In the English sentence, "provinces" is an accusative plural—I'd say. The explanatory Finnish term läänit is in nominative plural. The accusative case is without correspondence in Finnish. Is it then justified to choose the next closest case from the germanic point of view?

What if the whole sentence would be translated into Finnish? Then lääni—this is the basic, i.e. nominative singular, form—would have to take on partitive singular: lääniä. How does an English speaker figure any sense out of this?

As positive example I'd like to refer to the third paragraph of the very same article: "Formerly there was a division to state local districts". As the corresponding term for districts, the authors give kihlakunta, the singular form rather than the plural kihlakunnat. Another example: the Regions of Finland-article starts with "The state of Finland is divided into 20 regions (maakunta)". Here, too, nominativ singular is used rather than e.g. the nominativ plural maakunnat.

I'm pretty sure information content would improve if we'd keep grammatical forms of references to other languages simple and consistently applied transparent principles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johannes.Frech (talk • contribs) 09:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Which maakunta in which alue?
We have to make this clear somehow, perhaps in the table. – Kaihsu (talk) 15:28, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, was just reading this article and thought it was odd that this information was displayed anywhere. An additional column to the table will probably do fine. – Micropot (talk) 00:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

First-level administrative divisions in Europe?
There is this template at bottom: "First-level administrative divisions in Europe". I'm not sure, but my impression is that after the provinces were abolished there are no official higher-level administrative regions (higher than municipality). 82.141.64.59 (talk) 06:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
 * They are the first-level division after the provinces were abolished in 2010. See ISO 3166-2:FI. Regions of Finland are cooperative organisations between Finnish municipalities and not hold that much power. Provinces were administrative organs of the state, regions are not. The new Regional State Administrative Agencies are not subdivisions, just agencies. --Pudeo' 18:41, 17 February 2013 (UTC)


 * There you said it: "Regions of Finland are cooperative organisations between Finnish municipalities", rather than administrative divisions. And administrative division article has this: "established for the purpose of government", which these are not. 85.217.34.67 (talk) 17:45, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

And this proves that the municipalities are actually the highest-level administrative divisions in Finland. At least until maakuntauudistus (~county reform) might come to exist. 193.64.36.165 (talk) 18:30, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

ely-keskus
Something needs to be said about these. – Kaihsu (talk) 21:26, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Name not English??
Where do the names come from? Why are there DIFFERENT names for the places in ENGLISH in the English wikipedia when there are official English names, which are widely used? Why does wikipedia mention these names with NO SOURCES and no explanation? I think especially about the Tavastias - it is seems like using Danzig - as it was an old name why not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.204.102 (talk) 02:04, 24 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I believe those "Tavastia", "Finland Proper" etc. names were invented translations by the original creator of English Wikipedia articles for those regions. Unfortunately those names were left on Wikipedia for years so some other websites picked them up from Wikipedia in the meantime. Anssi~enwiki (talk) 11:41, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 20 May 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 09:55, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Counties of Finland → Regions of Finland – There was some confusion about the full scope of the recent administrative reform that came into effect last year and its effects on the English nomenclature. The previous government's reform plan would have transfered the health and social services to the already existing regions and renaming them counties. However the current government's reform that ended up going through left the existing regions (maakunta/landskap) intact while establish new Wellbeing services counties (hyvinvointialue/välfärdsområde), the borders of which are based on those of the regions'. For example Statistics Finland treats the two as separate classifications, https://www2.stat.fi/en/luokitukset/maakunta/ https://www2.stat.fi/en/luokitukset/hyvinvointialue/ Given that there's already a page for the Wellbeing services counties, which also discusses the elected county councils, the name of this page should be reverted back to Regions of Finland. Fenn-O-maniC (talk) 09:17, 20 May 2022 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support. No one calls them "counties" in Finland. They are called regions. Historically Finland also used to consist of provinces (Finnish: lääni) but this system was abolished years ago, nowadays it is just regions which are in turn divided into municipalities. J I P  &#124; Talk 13:35, 20 May 2022 (UTC)