Talk:Finland Proper (disambiguation)

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Finland

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Untitled

Where does the English translation of the name of the province come from? My guess would be that is just a word-for-word translation made up by someone, not endorsed by the provincial council itself. I've never seen "Finland Proper" used in English, except for here in Wikipedia. "South-West Finland" is more common. Even the provincial council uses that name in its name in English: http://www.varsinais-suomi.fi/Default.aspx?id=335593.

It is true that the Finnish name "Varsinais-Suomi" derives from the word "varsinainen", translating into English as proper, real, actual etc. I'm not Swedish-speaking, but I think that "egentlig" in Swedish has pretty much of the same meaning.

The reason for calling the South-West corner of Finland the "actual or real" Finland is historical as the old provincial name of fi: Suomi / sw: Finland expanded to cover other historical provinces also and now encompasses a much larger area than in the Middle Ages. The old province was distinguished from the rest of the country by adding the moniker "Varsinais-" to the name.