Sauna is the Most Common Finnish Word in English

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, thank you. My name is Steve Resnick. I live in the town of Sandwich on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Well, Steve, we’re really glad you called.

Well, my mom, my Finnish immigrants came to Cape Cod in 1912.

And my mom always said the only Finnish word in the English language was sauna, or how the Finns would say it is sauna, you know, like a steam bath.

And I was always curious to see if that was the only Finnish word in the English language.

So your mother’s people were Finnish from Finland.

Yes.

So your question is, is sauna or sauna the only Finnish word adopted into English?

That’s correct.

All right.

So we can kind of puzzle this out by going into the biggest English dictionary, which is the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s the most complete so far.

It doesn’t have every word, but it’s got a lot of them.

And we can search the etymologies for words derived from Finnish.

And this is going to get us a lot of entries.

It turns out, though, there are only 75 results in that dictionary that mention the word Finnish.

And so we can kind of eyeball those.

Not all those entries are from Finnish.

They just mention the word Finnish.

And using my native speaker’s intuition and my experience as a person who has made dictionaries, I can look at that and I can tell you, I would indeed say that sauna or sauna is, listen, the most common everyday word that is from Finnish that is in English.

Notice that qualifying word, everyday.

So it’s not the only word from Finnish that’s in English.

It’s the most common everyday word that’s in English.

There are a lot of specific cultural names and other things from Finnish, stuff like a Finnish knife and a sledge and a type of rug and a type of granite and an old unit of currency that are sometimes used in English and specialty texts.

But they’re always used in English in association with Finland or Finnish culture.

They’re never used in English without also being associated with Finland.

And so they’re kind of…

But sauna is used on its own in English without any connection at all to Finland or Finnish culture.

And so that, I would say, is a perfect isolated adoption into English.

Okay.

I would say that the other word that I hear most often when I think of Finns is, you know what I’m going to say?

I think so. Say it.

Sisu.

Sisu. That was my number two.

So do you know this word, S-I-S-U, Sisu?

I do not.

Well, that’s a kind of bread, right?

No.

So this was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018, and it was defined by the editors of the OED as strength of will, courage, and resilience in the face of adversity regarded as qualities and attributes of the Finnish people.

But it’s a distant second behind sauna.

It’s like way down in the word list, like way down.

Like probably not even the top 10,000 words.

Well, thank you very much.

I do listen to you guys quite a bit, and I do enjoy your show.

All right. Thanks, Steve. Take care of yourself.

Thanks for calling, Steve.

Drive safely out there, all right?

Okay. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I do like that word SISU, S-I-S-U, that has to do with grit and resilience and determination and all those qualities that you would need if you were in one of those Finnish settlements up there in northern Wisconsin.

Right. Absolutely.

Because you can’t do it without a lot of internal strength, right?

Guts.

Yes.

Internal power.

A lot of pride in that word, right?

Mm—

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