There’s been a couple of wrangles over what things should be called in Swedish-speaking Finland in the last few weeks.

Firstly the south-western municipalities of Pargas, Houtskär, Iniö, Korpo and Nagu which are merging to form one district at the beginning of 2009 are having difficulty in coming to any kind of agreement as to what to call their new municipality. There have been numerous proposals. The joint committee of decision makers from the five municipalities originally intended their new municipal name to be Väståboland (West Åboland). However, the quasi-government langauge body ‘The research institute for the languages of Finland” recommended that the new entity call itself Gullkrona. Other candidates were Berghamn, Erstan, Östad, Skärgårdsstad and simply Pargas after the largest existing town. The name Pargas was predictably popular with the Pargas town councillors. However, the others can’t seem to form any agreement. The latest suggestion is Havskrona.

The Finance Ministry has clearly got fed up with waiting to hear what the new archipelago municipality will be called. This week it announced that the district has a maximum of 2 more months (until mid-June) to settle the issue otherwise it will impose a decision upon the new municipality. If this should happen, it would be the first time that a municipality has failed to be able to agree on what it should call itself.

The other name debate that has been raging has been in northern Österbotten. There, the daily newspapers Jakobstads Tidning and Österbottningen are merging to form a single paper from 23 May this year. The papers are centred in the two towns of Jakobstad and Karleby (Kokkola), who are traditionally local rivals. Last month the newspapers’ board announced that the new merged newspaper would be called “Norra Tidningen” (“The northern newspaper”). This was met with uproar by the readers of both newspapers, who wrote into the paper’s letters section wondering if they were now living in Lapland. Additionally, the proposed abbreviation “Norran” does not come off the tongue well in the dialects of Österbotten – plus it’s already in use by the Swedish newspaper Norra Västerbotten. So, after continued pressure from the readers (and even a few politicians), the newspapers’ board relented and gave their readership the option to vote between three options; ‘Norra Tidningen’, ‘Nya Österbotten’ (“New Österbotten”) and ‘Österbottens Tidning” (“Österbotten’s Newspaper”). It was announced this week that Österbottens Tidning had won the day convincingly. Something that even the residents of Jakobstad and Karleby could agree on.

Newspaper image copyright Jakobstads tidning/HSS Media ab.