Image: Eila Haikarainen / Yle

Åland is called Ahvenanmaa in Finnish, and the provincial capital Mariehamn is known as Maarianhamina. The unilingually Swedish-speaking semi-autonomous province now wants to be known only by its Swedish place names.

The NLS believes that such a move would significantly weaken the reliability of its maps. If the proposal were accepted, Finnish language place names would no longer show up in searches on the Survey’s maps, for example Karttapaikka.fi.

Jarmo Ratia, head of the NLS, says that the complaint alleges that the service is breaking the language law and damaging the Åland brand by including Finnish names.

Pirkko Nuolijärvi, of the Institute for the National Languages of Finland, says that the name Ahvenanmaa has been in use since the 1600s.

”I don’t quite understand what is the motivation for this—what harm do Finnish language names do?” asked Nuolijjärvi.

Minority names should be used

The institute has been asked to advise the NLS on Åland’s request. They recommended that the NLS has no reason to remove Finnish names from the map and that the language law does not apply to old and established names. The institute also recommended that in future maps should contain Swedish names for unilingually Finnish places.

For example Lahti should be searchable from its Swedish name ’Lahtis’, while Kajaani should also be found by users looking for ’Kajana’.

Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. According to Finland’s language law, a municipality is bilingual if at least 3,000 speakers of the minority language reside there, or if they make up at least eight percent of the population.

The NLS will probably send its response by the end of the week.

”It will be ready in the next few days,” said Ratia. ”It is not possible to reply in Finnish, so the answer is being translated into Swedish.”