Thursday, October 29, 2015

Names and symbols in the Finnish culture

The Finnish symbols include flags, heraldics, the Finnish maiden and the Finnish wild nature. Names are not considered symbols and there is a strong agreement that names should not be followed and not be paid attention to, "A name does not make a man worse, if the man ('s behaviour, lack of moral) does not make the name (reputation) worse.". The capital was chosen and named by the king of Sweden some 200 years ago. Before that Turku was the capital.
The flag of Finland has a blue cross on white background. Blue symbolizes rationality, in practise common sense with a picture of the whole and civilized views. White symbolizes moral, in practise the rule "Live and let others live!" and civilized wise behaviour & carrying responsibility. The cross comes from Christianity. These are considered national values to be respected in Finland by all.
The heraldic symbol of a lion is taken to mean something like liveliness, vigour, wisdom of life, strenght, superior skill, courage with healthy mind and spirit and not exactly lions.
Finland's map looks like a maiden, so the symbol Finnish maiden which is considered wise and with wisdom of life, feeling too.
The nature as symbols kind of cures symbols and national values to more healthy, common sense like, natural, modest yet good quality, able to endure in the Finnish climate.

(My last name is Tervola, of which I was told as a kid that it is the best last name in Finland. It gives the easy association "health sings", so maybe that was the goal in choosing the name Helsinki, Healthsing, (about Finnish wisdom about health see in this blog http://finnishskills.blogspot.fi/2015/11/healthy-ways-of-living.html), but Finns did not know many foreign languages and English wasn't so widely used at those times.)
In Finnish language the name of Finland is Suomi, which gives as an easy association "mi suo" which means "That which gives by giving the possibility to something" meaning something like "the country giving like the nature gives better possibilities for life".

13.3.2018   Some foreigners have the nasty habit of guessing at the meanings and associations of Finnish words by finding words with similar letters, but that is not how Finnish words and associations between words are born. Finnish words build uon the phonetical meanings of letters and upon an honest wise landscape like view of the thing in question. Like for example in the Finnish word for peace "rauha": r is conflict like situation and taking distance, maybe dividing the situation into parts, a is according to the traditional culture, u is non-conceptualized wider environment & wider view, more profound, h is easy and ha is the sound of laughter, things well.

4th of June 2019   The blue in the Finnish flag refers to objective thinking with a view of the whole. The white in the flag of Finland symbolizes good moral. These are not atmosphere colours to follow or otherwise pictures of the Finns. Instead they are useful additions which are often needed in life. If you just live your life or do something, just following your wishes often does not bring a well working result. But if you add good quality thinking to support it and take care that the effects are good for life in the society and in the world, in the individual lives of each with wisdom of life, then it usually happens that all can just freely according to their so corrected wishes live their lives, according to their emotions, likings and wisdom of life. And so these two colours in the flag of Finland are a reminder of what is needed in addition to just living your life as you feel like doing. So invest some work in these virtues and life just smiles. 

 

1st of October 2020   I was born in Helsinki and lived there over 30 years. So I heard quite many versions of why the capital has such a name, but mostly the opinion was fully according to the Finnish saying "A name does not make a man worse if the man does not make the name /reputation worse." i.e. that one ought not pay attention to names but to things themselves instead.

Tervola was maybe the best Finnish name, so it maybe was considered as the name of the capital: "health sings" which both are Finnish values and Finnish skills. But the Swedish translated it wrong to "helsin". Or that the name originally was meant to be "health sings" or the like but foreigners in Helsinki took to heart the associaltion "hell sin" to it and did amazingly much evil, and so Finns thought that it is better to have a Finnish version of that association to the name Helsinki (-ki means also) so that things would not go so criminal.

Finland is a neighbour of Sweden and for things to work out well solutions need to be well thought of and that means that one should have honest picture of how things are as a starting point, and with Swedes that worked out only with the association "hell sin" since they tend to lie in imago oriented ways. 

If a place has a beautiful name that is a value people there respect, some follow only the name and bypass other things and so if one has good quality objectivity as a goal, one ought to take into account everything in one's thinking and that is why Helsnki is maybe named so that it has the association: "hell sin too" must be taken into account in thoughts. 

Finland used to have very good quality of life due to wisdom of life and healthy ways of living and objective thinking with a view of the whole and a well running society, so that other nations, other cultures looked like hell and hell sin in comparison. A capital is much for associating with the rest of the world, but a communication was lacking since Finns did not know what difficulties the other countries needed to overcome, and so to gain communication and to be able to help the others to wise ways of living, Finns choose a name of the capital that is not good but which helps us to help the rest of the world to a better future, muvh happier.

Finland was very harmonical and fractureless, with wise people countryside, but big towns and the capitaƶ had foreign influencies,of which the young adults coming from the more countryside areas of Finland had to be warned.


22th of December 2023   My comments 


About the name of Helsinki, and of beneficamity grounds for moral, etc https://learntalents.blogspot.com/2023/11/beneficality-grounds-for-moral.html 

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Translation rights

One can translate this blog and my texts and my videos (khtervola) on links from this blog, morally to other languages.