Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/finnaz

Shouldn't the English translation be Sámi? Old Norse Finnr means Sámi while ethnic Finns were called Kvens. The Fenni described by Tacitus were apparently nomadic hunter-gatherers which also applies to the Sámi, but probably not the ancestors of the Finnish people at that time. --Bos-primigenius (talk) 21:33, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if Proto-Germanic speakers even bothered to make the distinction. How different were Finns and Sami 2000+ years ago? —Rua (mew) 10:20, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

@Rua: German Finne is supposedly actually borrowed from Swedish, and Old English Finn might just be a borrowing from Old Norse Finnr, or perhaps a PWG borrowing from Proto-Norse. That could make this word younger than PGmc. --{{victar|talk}} 10:34, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Quite different. Different languages, different forms of subsistence, different cultures, different homelands ... they were easily as different as Romans and Gauls. Which is known to every expert on the prehistory of the Sámi. Both Proto-Sámi and Proto-Finnic (which are very distinct from each other) are now dated to about the 2nd century AD by top experts, by the way, contemporary with Tacitus and Ptolemy, so, as Victar warns, what was 2000+ years ago is irrelevant, as the term – as far back as we can trace it – is more recent. It would be better to reconstruct it to Proto-Norse only.

Moreover, using the term "Finns" when talking about antiquity is an anachronism anyway. There was no ethnic identity corresponding to what "Finns" now means in antiquity, and Proto-Finnic is not the same language as Finnish – just like Latin is not the same language as Ladin or Ladino, and the ancient Romans aren't the same ethnic group as the Romanians or Romansh people; just like Proto-Norse is not the same language as Norwegian and the ancient Norse aren't the same ethnic group as modern Norwegians! In antiquity, there were only the Fenni and Phínnoi, and it's not particularly plausible that they spoke Proto-Finnic.

One complication is that non-Germanic indigenous people in ancient Scandinavia appear to have spoken different (unclassified, probably non-IE and non-Uralic) languages which only survive as substratum layers in Sámi languages, and so, Proto-Norse speakers must have encountered both indigenous people that spoke Sámi and indigenous people that spoke other languages in Scandinavia, while *Finna- apparently covered both, or even originally only the second type. However, Proto-Finnic was clearly limited to the eastern shores of the Baltic, in Estonia and along the Gulf of Finland, in the 2nd century; so it wasn't a likely referent. Proto-Sámi was spoken further north, in what is now (central) Finland, eventually spreading north and west into the Scandinavian peninsula and gradually replacing the previous languages of Lapland.

Also, it's significant that most people inhabiting the geographical region corresponding to the modern state of Finland spoke Proto-Sámi or languages descended from it in the first millennium AD. So just like Gauls became Romans over time, so did Sámi become Finnic-speakers, and eventually Finns. Only the reindeer-herding Sámi of the Arctic, of Lapland, remained. On the other hand, 2000+ years ago, while the Scandinavian peninsula featured one set of non-IE, non-Uralic languages, much of Finland featured another, with Proto-Sámi apparently limited to what is now southern Finland and Karelia, and Proto-Finnic being its southern neighbour. It's always easier to talk about languages than ethnicities in history, because ethnic identity is much more variable, and people keep migrating and adopting shifting identities. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:50, 10 April 2021 (UTC)