This article was published on the 10th of July 2025 and only on my Clwaideac na Cuinne website, as are all articles published on this website. This article and all of the author's work is published in the UK. This is the first in a series of articles discussing etymology on my www.clwaideac-na-cuinne.co.uk website (this website). These articles are completely separate from any of my other work on etymology, including from the online articles that discuss etymologies on my www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk website (not the website you are currently on). Much of my work on languages concerns etymologies, and looking at etymologies from different perspectives. I have written a large number of articles and books on these subjects in other publications. The examples in this article are nearly all never before discussed, and this article and its general content have not been published anywhere elsewhere and this article, like all my articles, is unique from all others, despite that I discuss different examples of and aspects of similar topics throughout different publications. In this article I primarily look at a few recently noticed (in July 2025) Finnish, Bjarmian and Quechua similarities, comments on Faroese words and on Japanese-Finnish similarities, with many references to other words. This work is not the same as and does not contain the same content as any of my other articles or books on these subjects published before, including those books and articles I published this year which discuss different aspects of Finnish-Quechuan similarities, and other linguistic similarities. This article contains a total of 2162 words (this paragraph and contents and titles included). The web address of this article is given at the very end of the article in smaller font. This article is titled as 1-etym: New interesting etymologies, noticed July 2025, -etym being short for “etymology”. Other articles in this series on this website will also use the stem -etym after the number, the article currently before you being the first article on this website that discusses etymologies specifically. Note that other articles on this website will also discuss a lot of etymologies, such as those others already published on www.clwaideac-na-cuinne.co.uk, but articles with the -etym title stem will discuss primarily groups of etymologies in a less-specific way, whereas other articles on the website that discuss etymologies will do so in a way more focused or geared towards particular individual languages, groups of words, or other topics. Thus -etym articles will be more general etymology articles, containing newly discovered similarities. Note also that I have published PDF books recently that also discuss Northern European and Arctic European languages, and insular Germanic languages (e.g. pre-IE Icelandic words) in great detail, but the content and discussions in the article in front of you are completely different from those in those aforementioned books, and vice versa, even if occasionally the same word or concept might be brought up. Note that I have been publishing newly discovered Quechua-Finnish words on a more or less monthly basis, with new connections being published each time, different from in previous publications. Austronesian language words, and words from other languages not mentioned in the titles or this paragraph, are also mentioned in some sections of the article in front of you. This article was published on the 10th of July 2025, and no AI was used in writing or creating any part of this article, nor in the creation and writing of any of my other articles, books and publications in general. 

 

Apart from the title and paragraph above, and this sentence and the following contents, this article contains the following sub-sections:

I. Another Finnish and Quechua word for “mud”, Bjarmian and Quechua, discussions and some other new discoveries (shortest section of article but packed with etymologies)

II. More mysteries of Faroese etymologies (longest section of article, despite shortest title)

III. More Finnish and Japanese connections, and Kiribati, and reference (shorter section)

I. Another Finnish and Quechua word for “mud”, Bjarmian and Quechua, discussions and some other new discoveries

 

To begin discussing the words: one example of a possible etymological link I noticed very recently is the similarity between Finnish muta – “mud”, and Quechua mit’u – “mud”. This is not to mention the similarity I have published about before on another similarity in words for “mud” in these languages, another word for “mud” in Finnish is kura, which bares similarity to the Quechua word t’uru – “clay, mud”. Another similarity I noticed very recently is that between Finnish kaita – “narrow, slim” and Quechua kichki – “narrow”. This also bares particular similarity to Bjarmian *kicca- (1) “narrow”. Another possible connection between Bjarmian and Quechua can be seen in the Bjarmian word hattara- (1) - “bush” and Quechua sach’a – “forest”. At least in Cusco Quechua, sach’a also refers to bush-like trees, and it is common in these similarities for a Finnish initial h- to be equivalent to a Quechua initial s-, although this is not always the case, and sometimes this is reversed. I have also commented previously that Quechua sach’a shows similarity to the Finnish words kaski and huhta, both of which describe cleared areas of forest. Note that in an article on BookofDunBarra (not this website), which I published last year, I talked about the similarity between Finnish muta and an Arawak word, and have discussed other aspects to the word muta elsewhere, including its obvious similarity to the English word "mud". See the reference after (1) near the end of this article to see where the Bjarmian words were sourced from. My other publications this year with Finnish and Quechua cognates include several PDF-only books, as well as an unrelated print-only book, titled: Similarities in Quechua and Finnish language words newly noticed in March 2025 and not previously published, and other connected topics not previously published; book published only in print format and not in other formats; book published in the UK,  and an unrelated archive.org-only (only published on archive.org) article, titled: A discussion on 7 more potential Finnish and Quechuan word similarities found in April 2025 and published in April 2023 and which were not published in my recent print-only book that was published in March 2025 (this April 2025 article includes 7 main Finnish words discussed with 7 possibly related Quechua words and discussions), published only on archive.org, published in the UK (available at the following web-address: https://archive.org/details/a-discussion-on-7-more-potential-finnish-and-quechuan-word-similarities-found-in-April-2025-and ). All these publications including the article in front of you contain separate examples from each other. Other articles published this year also talk about separate Quechua-Finnish similarities not mentioned in other publications, Veps-Quechua comparisons and other Uralic-Quechuan links and many other topics of course.

II. More mysteries of Faroese etymologies

The Faroese language, one of the insular North-Germanic languages, also has some words of uncertain etymology. Some of these words are connected with Old Irish, for example lámur for a “seal’s flipper”. This is traditionally connected to the Old Irish word lám – “hand”, and to modern Irish lámh and Scottish Gaelic làmh, làimh, lwàmh et cetera. Owing to the ancient spiritual associations with seals in the Faroe Islands and elsewhere, I think it unlikely that this word would have simply passed from medieval Irish to then mean “seal flipper” in Faroese and Icelandic. Whilst this root word is found in Indo-European languages, and is related to for example, the English word “palm”, the word as it appears in Faroese could have a non-Indo-European origin, especially given the specific meaning of “seal flipper”, and the fact that seals were considered sacred animals in the Faroe Islands, and that the ancestral legends of the Faroe Islands, and for example Scotland and Ireland, even imply that the ancient ancestors could take the form of seals. This concept can be archaeologically connect to ancient Scottish cultures, as there has been at least one find of a seal flipper inside a prehistoric shell midden in Scotland. This is especially interesting given that lámur means “seal flipper” in Faroese; does this imply that lámur is a pre-Indo-European word? It is noteworthy that similar words appear in a variety of other languages, including in the Austronesian languages. For example the Hawaiian word for “hand” is the similar looking word, lima, which also means “five”, owing to that a hand generally has 5 fingers!

Another interesting Faroese word I would like to discuss is the word petti, which means “a piece”. According to Wiktionary, this is from the French word petit – “small”. Whilst I do not doubt that there is some connection between these words, I find it highly unlikely that the French word for “small” would come to mean “piece” in Faroese. I think it far more likely that Faroese petti has some relationship to the Welsh word peth – “thing”, English “peat”, and Cornish peth – “thing”, and more distantly to Pictish *pet or *pit likely of slightly different meaning, a word I have discussed in more detail elsewhere. I find this far more plausible than the idea of the Faroese word coming from French. Why would Faroese people lack a word for “piece” and need to adopt a word from French? The notion seems pretty unlikely. And going back to the word lámur, if this is from Old Irish, why, of all the Old Irish words, likely to have specific purpose, would the Faroese adopt the word for “hand”, a concept that they obviously already had in their language; and apply it to a seal’s flipper; something that they would likely have already had a word for? The concept doesn’t make sense. There is also the Norwegian word luffe for a flipper, which bares some similarity to lámur and lámh, etc. Rather than this word being of Old Irish origin, could both lámur and luffe simply be much more ancient, indigenous words for a flipper, related to the Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Indo-European forms, but of a much more ancient origin, shared with Hawaiian lima for example? The English word “luff” may also be related. P.s. Perhaps the most famous Faroese story connected to the distant ancestors having an ability to appear as seals, is that of Kópakonan – “The Seal Woman”.

Note that next month I hope to have published something pertaining to Iceland and Icelandic staves in a Silly Linguistics magazine issue. This will again be completely separate from information in any other publications. 

 

III. More Finnish and Japanese connections, and Kiribati, and reference

 

The Japanese language is a language that I am not very familiar with at all, but I have also noticed quite a number of words in Japanese which can be seen as similar to words in unrelated languages, and have published these before. I will mention some new ones here. There are two Japanese words pertaining to trees, which seem to have some similarity to words in Uralic languages. Japanese もり, mori – “forest”, shows a similarity to some of the Sámi words for “tree”, such as Northern Sámi muorra – “tree”, Southern Sámi moere – “tree” and Inari Sámi muorâ – “tree”. The Japanese word for “pine tree”, まつ matsu, bares a close similarity to Finnish mänty - "pine tree" (discussed elsewhere on this website), and even more so to Finnish metsä – “forest” (also discussed elsewhere on this website and in many other places by the author). I also published not too long ago about possible Quechuan and other cognates to this word metsä, and have discussed others elsewhere. Another possible similarity with Uralic can be seen in the Japanese word ゆげ yuge – “steam”. Could this perhaps bare a relationship to Finnish hehku – “glow” and to Estonian õhk – “air”? Note that I recently published a PDF book with other comments on similar words in Estonian and in other languages, including Estonian – Quechua similarities, and I have mentioned this Estonian and the Finnish word in my previous publications. Lastly I would like to note the interesting similarity between some words connected to “octopuses, squid” and “time”, “life” and “eternity” I have discussed aspects to this elsewhere but not in this context nor in relation to Japanese. In Finnish mythology the god Iku-Turso has a name meaning something like “eternal octopus”. This word iku- does not by itself mean “octopus” but seems to be connected to them, it itself being related to Finnish iki – “eternally” and ikä – “age or lifetime”. It is noteworthy that in Japanese, いきる ikiru means “to live”, which is also, perhaps not coincidentally, similar to the Japanese word ika meaning “squid”. It is also curious for example that the Kiribati word kiika means “octopus”, Kiribati being an Austronesian language and completely unrelated to Japanese (and to Finnish). 

Blessings. Below is the reference, and below that is the web address of this article included for completion sake.

(1) Bjarmian words in this article are as given in Substrata Uralica: Studies on Finno-Ugrian Substrate in Northern Russian Dialects, by Janne Saarikivi