> Scr�obh Hans Aberg: >> >> Or "groups of islands" (and a province): sorry I did not think of >> that. My Bonnier's Encyclopedia from 1967 suggests that the word >> �land comes from Primitive Norse: either Ahwiland, "land of island", >> or "Ahvaland", "land of water".... > > That makes sense. How interesting! The Irish word for 'river' is 'abha', > with historical pronunciationa like both 'ahva' and 'ahwa' - until > now, I had not considered a Norse association for that particular word.">

Unicode Mail List Archive: Re: �land (original) (raw)

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From: "Marion Gunn" <mgunn@egt.ie>
> Scr�obh Hans Aberg:
>>
>> Or "groups of islands" (and a province): sorry I did not think of
>> that. My Bonnier's Encyclopedia from 1967 suggests that the word
>> �land comes from Primitive Norse: either Ahwiland, "land of island",
>> or "Ahvaland", "land of water"....
>
> That makes sense. How interesting! The Irish word for 'river' is 'abha',
> with historical pronunciationa like both 'ahva' and 'ahwa' - until
> now, I had not considered a Norse association for that particular word.

And what is the origin of the name of the "Oland" islands (part of the
Swedish territory, and that has a very similar prununciation, and not very
far to the South of �land Islands in the Baltic sea) when you know that many
people in �land speak Swedish preferably to Finnish?

Is there really a difference of pronunciation between Oland and �land in
Swedish ? May this justify the fact that �landers prefer not speaking about
�land Islands, due to possible confusion with the Swedish Oland Islands in
oral speech ?

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