-nen

Usage notes

• Surnames ending in -nen were first recorded in Savonia (and to a somewhat lessex extent Karelia) in the early 16th century, with -nen affixed to nicknames (Korhonen) and vernacular forms of given names (Heikkinen) after the ancestor or patriarch of a family. In the 19th century surnames were required of all Finns, and many new names were created by adding -nen to topographic terms (Ahonen) and to words describing natural phenomena (Aaltonen).
  • 38% of Finns had a surname ending in -nen in 1985.
• Should not be confused with -inen with which it may be conflated in colloquial speech and some dialects. For example, keltanen may appear to be kelta + -nen, but is actually a colloquial form of keltainen, itself kelta + -inen.
• As with -inen, -nen nominals have a combining form that replace the suffix with an -s-, which is used whenever they are followed by another part in a compound word: e.g. ukkonen (> ukkos-) + myrsky = ukkosmyrsky.

Declension

Back vowel harmony declension (includes vowels a, o, u)

Front vowel harmony declension (includes vowels ä, ö, y)

Derived terms

See also

• -inen
• -lainen
• -llinen
• -mainen