Talk:Southwest Finland

This article should be moved to Finland Proper, which is currently a redirect page linking to Finland Proper (historical province). As current Finnish regions are (in my opinion at least) much more notable than historical provinces of the Kingdom of Sweden (for which there are not many sentences of text in the articles anyway), I believe this should be the more prevalent article. This has already been proposed at Talk:Historical provinces of Finland, and since nobody has responded to the suggestion in over four days, I suppose there's not much opposition to the proposal. - ulayiti (talk) 19:07, 27 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

This article has been renamed after the result of a move request. violet/riga (t) 22:39, 4 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Could we move away from the term "Finland Proper"? It is a worthy attempt to translate "Varsinais-Suomi" into English literally. Unfortunately the literal translation doesn't make sense in English. Can't we just stick with "Varsinais-Suomi"? Nobody in their right mind would try to translate into English "Lappeenranta" or "Tampere"... or even "Glasgow", though all have interesting and informative translations. - malcolmrutter — Preceding unsigned comment added by Malcolmrutter (talk • contribs) 12:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

This article uses an incorrect name of a province. It officially has labeled itself in English as province of Southwest Finland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.186.178.115 (talk) 22:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

What on earth is the Finnish definition of a city? I've lived in Kaarina for almost a decade and there's no way that a native English speaker would ever describe Paimio, Askainen et al. as cities. They are towns and small towns, at that. It's not even as if they have any ecclesiastical claims as the only cathedral I'm aware of in the entire province of Varsinais Suomi is the Tuomio in Turku. Can somebody please explain? Jatrius 17:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Any muncipality can decide if they are a city or not. There is no rules or requirements for it anymore. Atleast if Finnish Wikipedia is right.

--82.130.33.175 (talk) 00:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

There are rules and requirements about the term "kaupunki"/"stad". The municipality has to regard itself as such. :-)

But I would translate the words as town, not city, unless the municipality is a city. The definition of city is of course unclear, but the right to call oneself a "kaupunki", which can be translated as either, doesn't bring any legitimacy for the term city in this context.

--LPfi (talk) 21:59, 23 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

The map and the list of municipalities is badly outdated, ie. Alastaro is now a part of Loimaa, etc. 88.115.205.94 (talk) 23:20, 3 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

"Finland Proper" is an unofficial term you run into only on the Internet (mostly because of Wikipedia). The official term (according to The Institute for the Languages of Finland / Kotimaisten Kielten Keskus) is "Varsinais-Suomi" (see: http://www.kotus.fi/index.phtml?s=518 ). Only the Council of Southwest Finland uses "Southwest Finland". Using "Finland Proper" only causes confusion and makes anyone using the Wikipedia for translation assistance wrong. Jouk (talk) 12:09, 2 November 2012 (UTC)Reply

- References to "Finland Proper" being incorrect: Official EU document example, EU Policy Document for "Industry strategy of Varsinais-Suomi 2009", term as used by the Finnish Police, etc... Jouk (talk) 07:25, 5 November 2012 (UTC)Reply

All references mentioned above is in finnish or mention the finnish region names as complement to the geographich description in english. It has no relevance to what name should be used in english. The name in english should be either "Southwest Finland" (Varsinais-Suomi) or "Finland proper" (Egentliga Finland). /Esquilo (talk) 13:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Esquilo, the above mentioned translations are incorrect. Varsinais-Suomi translates as "Finland-Proper". Southwest Finland would be "Lounais-Suomi". I would like to point out, that the latin name is "Finnia Propria". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.232.222.14 (talk) 13:04, 25 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

I suggest the article be named back to Finland Proper. It is consistent to translate regional names in Finland, e.g. Savo -> Savonia, Karjala -> Karelia, Pohjanmaa -> Ostrobothia, Lappi -> Lapland. Regional names need not follow the same principles than city names. Also, Southwest Finland cannot be used as a substitute. It refers to the Administrative Agency which also includes other areas. "Varsinais-Suomi" is not so much a name than a point of reference to the fact the region used to be called Finland. As such, it is not useable in any meaningful way in the English language. The only proper (no pun intended) English name for the region is Finland Proper. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.226.58.238 (talk) 00:50, 2 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I also suggest that the name be switched back to Finland Proper. Southwest Finland is misleading and plainly wrong, because it refers to the two provinces of Satakunta AND Finland Proper. It might sound archaic, but is not bad English in any way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.232.20.222 (talk) 14:28, 22 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

I'm confused about the whole name issue here. Why on Earth does Finland Proper redirect to Southwest Finland? The names don't have anything to do with each other. I, a native Finn, wasn't even aware there was a concept of "Southwest Finland" until now, although I have known of Finland Proper (Varsinais-Suomi, Egentliga Finland) for several decades. This isn't a question about the language (Finland Proper vs. Varsinais-Suomi vs. Egentliga Finland) but about two completely unrelated ways of naming the same region. JIP | Talk 18:30, 2 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

I also think that the name should be changed back to Finland Proper. It describes the region better and almost all otherlanguage articles' names are derivatives of Vaqrsinais-Suomi, so why sholdn't this be also? The name Southwest Finland, in my opinion, is the worst option for naming this article since it is used neither officially or informally. Dankos10 (talk) 14:53, 10 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

This thread is old, but adding this info here in case others are wondering the same thing: https://www.varsinais-suomi.fi/fi/
Varsinais-Suomen liitto, the Regional Council of Southwest Finland, is now officially calling Varsinais-Suomi Southwest Finland in English. It makes sense to me to keep this page updated to the most current usage and also to mention the historical names. Cpastern (talk) 21:55, 25 September 2018 (UTC)Reply

What proportion are native speakers of Swedish? Tony (talk) 09:22, 15 August 2018 (UTC)Reply