Photo: Leila Mattfolk

A name from a name

Many a place name is based on the name of a nearby place. This is how up to one third of the names in the Finnish archipelago were born. In Växar in Snappertuna there is an isthmus called Skataedet and a bay called Skataviken, both of which are based on the name of the peninsula Skatan. The name of a place can also be reused in new ways. Thus, e.g., the name of the bay Ölviken (the content of first part unclear, the last part is vik ’bay’) has served as the basis of the names of the estate Ölvik.

The Swedish dialectal word skate refers to a pointed peninsula. We have around a thousand place names containing this word in Finland, most of them in Ostrobothnia.