4 ms·

Finnish and Japanese is another of those combinations that should work very easily since the languages are related even if it's just indirectly.

Hamuko 6y ago
I actually tried out Finnish-Japanese girl names just to take a look. There were some pretty good bilingual ones, like Erika, Mari, Marika and Sara. However, there was quite a bit of names that I'd be really hesitant to use. Aili, Alisa, Elina, Lina, Lumi. If you know a thing or two about Japanese, you might realise a common failure with these names. There was also the user suggestion of "Minna". It seems that it's really a feminine name in Japanese, but at least to me it seems kinda awkward as a name for an individual person. Also, I'm not really sure if Finnish and Japanese are "indirectly related". As far as I know, it's just that they sound similar for reasons unknown.
- czzr 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, what’s the issue with those names in Japanese?
  - another-dave 6y ago
    I presume GP is talking about the Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_/l/_by_Japanese_speakers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_an...
    - james_s_tayler 6y ago
      It's probably more non-Japanese would pronounce the /l/ so differently that it would change the way the name sounds enough to be jarring to the individual who bears the name. That'd be a straight pain in the ass.
simias 6y ago
The theory that Japanese and Finnish could be related is very much controversial and not widely accepted by linguists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic Nobody knows for sure how Japonic languages relate to other families. Some theorize that it might share a genetic relationship with Korean, but even that has not been convincingly established. At any rate even if we chose to believe that both languages share a very distant common ancestor, it won't really help in this case. Russian, Italian, Dutch, English, Hindi and Gaelic languages do all belong to the Indo-European family, yet they diverged so much that finding matching names is a challenge. And keep in mind that genetic relationship between languages don't tell the whole story. Genetically, English is more closely related to German than French, yet in general English speakers have less trouble picking up French than German because of the huge French and Latin influence in the modern English language.
- Angeo34 6y ago
  >Russian, Italian, Dutch, English, Hindi and Gaelic languages do all belong to the Indo-European family, yet they diverged so much This is plainly wrong. Go on compare words in those languages and it will strike you how similar the words are whether it's German and Urdu, French and Persian or Hindi and Italian. Names are a different thing since names are rather based on religious and ethnic identity rather than actual language.

Hamuko 6y ago

I actually tried out Finnish-Japanese girl names just to take a look. There were some pretty good bilingual ones, like Erika, Mari, Marika and Sara. However, there was quite a bit of names that I'd be really hesitant to use. Aili, Alisa, Elina, Lina, Lumi. If you know a thing or two about Japanese, you might realise a common failure with these names. There was also the user suggestion of "Minna". It seems that it's really a feminine name in Japanese, but at least to me it seems kinda awkward as a name for an individual person. Also, I'm not really sure if Finnish and Japanese are "indirectly related". As far as I know, it's just that they sound similar for reasons unknown.

czzr 6y ago
Out of curiosity, what’s the issue with those names in Japanese?
- another-dave 6y ago
  I presume GP is talking about the Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_/l/_by_Japanese_speakers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_an...
  - james_s_tayler 6y ago
    It's probably more non-Japanese would pronounce the /l/ so differently that it would change the way the name sounds enough to be jarring to the individual who bears the name. That'd be a straight pain in the ass.

simias 6y ago

The theory that Japanese and Finnish could be related is very much controversial and not widely accepted by linguists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic Nobody knows for sure how Japonic languages relate to other families. Some theorize that it might share a genetic relationship with Korean, but even that has not been convincingly established. At any rate even if we chose to believe that both languages share a very distant common ancestor, it won't really help in this case. Russian, Italian, Dutch, English, Hindi and Gaelic languages do all belong to the Indo-European family, yet they diverged so much that finding matching names is a challenge. And keep in mind that genetic relationship between languages don't tell the whole story. Genetically, English is more closely related to German than French, yet in general English speakers have less trouble picking up French than German because of the huge French and Latin influence in the modern English language.

Angeo34 6y ago
>Russian, Italian, Dutch, English, Hindi and Gaelic languages do all belong to the Indo-European family, yet they diverged so much This is plainly wrong. Go on compare words in those languages and it will strike you how similar the words are whether it's German and Urdu, French and Persian or Hindi and Italian. Names are a different thing since names are rather based on religious and ethnic identity rather than actual language.