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![]() | On 23 August 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved to Finnic peoples. The result of the discussion was not moved. |
As a lay person with bad skills in english I will not try to edit this article, but one general remark must be made: If we want to make correct conclusions of the origin of the Baltic Finns, we should not disregard either the results of linguistic research or the results of genetic research. To claim that baltic finnic langues have been spoken in their current area in periods, when, according to the results of current linguistic research, they have not been spoken there, is thus doomed to be incorrect (at least if the linguistic research results won't chanche, which of course could be possible and has happened many times, but however at least now the results seem quite convincing, but of course they will be modified all the time and maybe also radically in some respect in some future stage). On the contrary then, such wiews should be found, that will not disregard either the results of genetic research, archaeological research, or the results of linguistic research or results in still other fields. And this, as far as I can see as a lay person, is excactly what has been tried to do in recent years by the younger generation of fennougrists, some of which are cited here, but not all. And because this recent research is cited in this article only randomly and not comprehensively, the overall picture in this article remains incomplete and partly misleading. If in some occassiopn I should have time, I could try to find some references but of course it would be better if this was done by someone who knows somewhat more about the subject. But the main message of this recent research, however, could be that populations may have changed there languages for several times. So it is well possible that there is continuity of settelement but the language has changed. -- Urjanhai ( talk) 11:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Where are Baltic Finns Curonians who later assimilated to Balts? -- 85.253.61.49 ( talk) 01:36, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Hey, is really necessary to start this article from Mesolithic period? Mesolithic goes to archeology, we don't have any evidence about the linguistic affiliations of people living on middle stone age. 94.101.2.146 ( talk) 12:44, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Google search results for "finnic people": 175,000 results. Google search results for "baltic finns": 38,000 results.
I suggest rewording the article title to "Finnic people"
SørenKierkegaard ( talk) 14:27, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
I came here from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Moving_"Baltic_Finns"_to_"Finnic_peoples", because, as an admin interested in linguistics, I fit user:Bishonen's suggestion as someone who could do the move. However, I see no consensus. So far, we have the following arguments:
It seems to me that #1 has been refuted by #3, which has not been refuted. #2 only examines one article. Still, if the defining article picture File:Lenguas fino-bálticas.png is correct, which situates the Karelians far from Karelia and the Baltic Sea, then "Baltic Finns" would feel to me less natural and precise. I think a way out of this dilemma is to follow the prescription of WP:COMMONNAME: "When there is no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used for the topic by these sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering [the WP:CRITERIA] directly." It might also make sense to spot check the dates of articles using one or the other term; if a change of terminology happened fairly recently, then it would be an argument for the newer name. — Sebastian 16:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Google Books:
Baltic Finns: 3600 results
Finnic people: 2520 results
Finnic peoples: 4760 results
Google Scholar:
Baltic Finns: 403 results
Finnic people: 201 results
Finnic peoples: 609 results
Third, the source to (a single) Janhunen's article has 0 mentions of "baltic finns", "finnic people", or "finnic peoples"
The overwhelming result, from every source that Wikipedia suggests to base naming rules on, is to use Finnic peoples as the name for the article. Also Encyclopaedia Britannica uses that term.
Edit: In addition to everything above, we already use [Finnic languages], [Finnic mythology], [Finnic culture], [Finnic]. It makes absolutely no sense to keep using "Baltic Finns" if "Finnic peoples" the most widely used term in literature. The current name of this article does not follow the Wiki naming conventions. Also the University of Tartu uses this term.
@ Minnekon: @ Velivieras: @ Urjanhai: please comment SørenKierkegaard ( talk) 17:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: page moved. — Sebastian 07:02, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Baltic Finns → Finnic peoples – "Finnic peoples" is the most commonly used term when analyzed by Google search, Google Books search, Google Scholar search. It is also the default term on all other Finnic-related articles in Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and in University of Tartu. In addition to all literature, it is also the most suitable as an umbrella term because "Finns" generally only refer to people living in Finland. The article in question comprises several different nations with a Finnic background. SørenKierkegaard ( talk) 17:52, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Comment: After I married this talk page with its parent page, I noticed something odd: Why does
Talk:Baltic Finns
Talk:Finnic peoples/Archive 1
Talk:Baltic Finns have so much talk page content for a redirect with no edit history? Was a cut-paste move done somewhere? Was edit history suppressed/deleted??
Steel1943 (
talk)
02:49, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
@ Steel1943: Thank you for your patience, and for the steps. If I understand you correctly, you are thinking of something like the process at WP:HISTMERGE#An easy case or WP:HISTMERGE#Merging page histories of pages with many revisions (apart from the exclusion of talk pages). But unfortunately it seems to me that we are dealing with WP:HISTMERGE#A troublesome case, because we have a long overlap between the histories - from 2010, when Termer created the first article "Finnic peoples" (as can be seen in this article's history) till 2015, when the last edit of the now deleted article was done. To make matters worse, the deleted history is already very fragmentary, as can be seen from the last edits displayed (My annotations in green):
I had tried to undelete the history to "Talk:Finnic peoples/OldVersion", as recommended in WP:HISTMERGE#A troublesome case, but I got a database timeout error, and then I got cold feet since I wasn't sure that that would give me the opportunity to enter a different name, and I didn't want to mess up things more than they already are. Since I have no experience with anything even remotely as "troublesome", I think it would be better to ask for someone with relevant experience at AN/I. — Sebastian 23:09, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to revert the recent page moves so that the deleted history of the content fork can be recovered. wbm1058 ( talk) 01:57, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
There is only one entry in the deletion log: 17:46, 7 February 2018 SebastianHelm deleted page Finnic peoples (G6: Deleted to make way for move)
So I think it's safe to restore everything. Virtually no overlap in the talk histories, so Steel's move to archive 1 may be an OK solution. wbm1058 ( talk) 02:35, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
This isn't the first time I've seen such activity in an ethnic group article, and alas, probably isn't the last. – wbm1058 ( talk) 03:32, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi, how are Finnic peoples related to Balts in ethnic terminology? I mean genetically, maybe - but this page is not about genetics. See the Dutch people as an example - they have "Germanic peoples" and then very close neighbours from inside that grouping under related ethnic groups, because the Dutch are germanic people. I don't understand why "Balts" are listed under "related ethnic groups" here. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 17:21, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Someone has renamed the article from "Finnic peoples" to "Baltic Finns" without any consensus on the talk page. It was decided with overwhelming consensus a while ago to keep the page as Finnic peoples. I cannot undo that move on my own. Can an admin step in and help please? Blomsterhagens ( talk) 14:46, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
We had a long and fruitless discussion about this on my talk page, where it became clear that User:Blomsterhagens doesn't know the lit and can't be bothered to check, and isn't even sure what this article is about. "Finnic" and "Balto-Finnic" are often synonyms, but often they're not. The Volga Finns, Permians and even the Saami have been categorized as "Finnic". Possibly this is due to changing classification of the Uralic language family, or to whichever linguistic source an author chooses to use, rather that to any ethnographic conception. (But then it's common to substitute linguistic classification for ethnicity, even in otherwise RS's.) There were dozens of incoming links to "Finnic peoples" where it was the Volga Finns or Volga Finns + Permians who were referred to. I cleaned those up where I could. Sometimes in our sources "Finnic" means generically Baltic, Volga and Permic. This is common in historical sources and often it seems in genetics. Many of the remaining incoming links to 'Finnic' are ambiguous. Some speak of "Finnic and other Siberian peoples", which suggests they don't mean the Baltic Finns, or at least not just them. Anyway, given the very common use in the lit of 'Finnic' to mean something other or something more than just the Baltic Finns, having this article at 'Finnic peoples' will require that we police the incoming links for the lifespan of Wikipedia. I'm not going to do that, and since it appears the incoming links had never been cleaned up, I doubt anyone else would. Even if we had a volunteer, it wouldn't last forever. So we need an unambiguous name for this article. I don't really care what it is -- "Finnic peoples (...)" with some dab would be fine. But moving it back to plain "Finnic peoples" in contradiction to our other articles and their sources would be damaging to the encyclopedia. — kwami ( talk) 22:13, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Summary: Volga Finns, Saami people and Permic people are not Finnic peoples. They do not speak Finnic languages. The creation of a new Finnic peoples disambiguation page was incorrect. Baltic Finns is a less-common synonym in academic sources for Finnic peoples - as has been established on this talk page before. These changes from the last couple of days should be reverted. "Baltic Finns" should be renamed back to Finnic peoples, as it has previously been. The user who did the renaming has not provided any sources to explain their actions. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 23:17, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Here's a source from the University of Helsinki, placing Finnic specifically in the area of Finland and Estonia in the iron age. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:12, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Here is a source from the University of Tartu, talking about Finnic peoples. 1) It talks about Finnic peoples and Finnic languages in the same context, clearly defining one through the other. 2) Finnic languages are defined as Estonian, Finnish, Ingrian and Votic. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:18, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Here is a source from the Council of Europe. Quoting: "The Finnic peoples are the Finns, the Karelians, the Vepsians, the Izhorians, the Votians, the Estonians and the Livonians. All live in the Baltic region between Scandinavia and Continental Europe. Their languages are fairly closely related and speakers of one can usually understand the others rather well. The Karelians, Vepsians, Izhorians and Votians live within the borders of the Russian Federation." Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:30, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: page moved per consensus. — kwami ( talk) 23:24, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Baltic Finns → Finnic peoples – An editor moved the page without any discussion or consensus on the talk page. The article was previously named Finnic peoples after a consensus on the talk page. " Finnic peoples" is the accepted, most commonly used definition in academic literature, as is evident in both google scholar and google books. The editor who renamed the page has not provided any sources to justify the move. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:51, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Russians in northern European Russia share moderate genetic similarities with Finnic peoples, who lived in modern north-central European Russia and were partly assimilated by the Slavs as the Slavs migrated northeastwards. Such Finnic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians.
The existence of "Baltic Sea Finns" is based on controversial/fringe theories put forward by
Kalevi Wiik, theories that are very far from mainstream (a quote from the article about Wiik here on en-WP says it all: ""Wiik's controversial ideas are rejected by the majority of the scholarly community, but they have attracted the enormous interest of a wider audience."
), and we're writing an encyclopaedia, not a history blog. Do a search for "Sea Finns" in
this pdf, and you'll find that it's based on a book by Wiik. - Tom |
Thomas.W
talk
22:34, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm finding a fair number of sources at GBooks that seem to use this longer form of the name to better distinguish them from the Balts, and none of them mention Wiik. Of course, I can't be sure they have nothing to do with Wiik. But just because some fringe scientist uses a term, that doesn't mean the term is invalid. — kwami ( talk) 23:17, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Tom's correct that 'Baltic' normally refers to the Baltic Sea, but of course it could also refer to the Balts or the Baltic countries. I never thought of it being 'Baltic Sea-Finns', and that seems a rather tortured reading, but I suppose some people might get confused -- though it's hard for me to imagine that anyone would take it to mean they came from across the sea. But that's why we have the lead, to clarify such things. If it weren't a proper name, we'd just hyphenate: Baltic-Sea Finns. We could do that anyway, maybe as a parenthetical: Baltic Sea Finns (Baltic-Sea Finns). I'm not sure the potential for confusion is great enough to bother, but that should presumably help. The main question is whether this wording is common enough to include in the lead. I did an ngram search, [1] and it didn't find any instances of 'Baltic Sea Finns' or 'Baltic Sea Finnic'. 'Balto-Finns' got a bit of traction in the mid 1980s, but had pretty much died out by 2004 (though the data ends in 2008). 'Baltic Finns' was the dominant wording from 1800 to 1969, when 'Baltic Finnic' took off, then plummeted, the came back to near parity with 'Baltic Finns', but much of that will be referring to the languages. If you plug in 'Balto-Finnic', that takes off in the 1960s, but again is presumably for the languages. From here, [2] our current title doesn't get any hits, 'Balto-Finnic peoples' and 'Balto-Finns' gets a few, but 'Baltic Finns' is dominant. (The singular forms in 'people' don't get any hits.) Of course, that just in what Google Books has scanned, which may or may not be representative. Why the phrase 'Baltic Sea Finns' shows up in a GBooks search but not in Ngram I don't know -- perhaps Ngram only searches books that are wholly available, whereas a GBooks search also gets snippet views? — kwami ( talk) 18:43, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
We should stick to international academics, not local nationalists from ethnic groups with clearly migrant DNA. -- Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii ( talk) 15:21, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
The only question here is, what the correct name in english to the peoples in question, the exictence and definition of whom is clearly beyond doubt. Then, the only way is to look at realiable sources written in english by reliable scholars and what is the word that is used in these reliable sources. The term that is currently used of this language group (and thus also the peoples, becauce the language group is only undisputed and reliable way to define the group of peoles as well) seems to be "finnic".
In finnish language the word is "itämerensuomalaiset" which translates literally to " Baltic sea finns", but only because in finnish language there are no separate words wor "finnic" and "finnish", and therefore the clarification " Baltic sea" is needed in the finnish language word when spreaking about the whole group of peoples or languges.) But whether or not one should use some expression like this in english is beyond my competence as a non native speaker of english and not being a scholar in this field either. (I only study language history as a hobby.)
But however, what is the most essential point, is that terms like Finno-ugric and finnic, finno-permic, volga finnic etc. and the term " Finnic peoples" itself (i. e. in other meanings than that used in this article) are no longer undisputed as names of language groups (and thus as names of groups of peoples) within the uralic language family, although some of them may still be valid as areal terms. This is explained for example here: [3] (a draft for a chapter in some forthcoming book, I guess). Undisputed are only the seven subgroups of the uralic language family (one of which is "finnic"), but how these should be grouped into larger subgroups within the language family or should they be grouped into larger subgroups at all, or to what extent, is under dispute. And, because this is the case, then the primary meaning of the term "Finnic" seems to be more and more the Finnic languages (or here the Finnic peoples in the sense of this article, whatever should be the correct name of the article in English in the English language Wikipedia) because the referents of the other meanings of the term "Finnic" are or at least may be disputed and some of them may even be or turn to be obsolete. -- Urjanhai ( talk) 15:42, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
But still, if the primary meanining in the current reasrch situation would be more and more like that what I assumed above, in older sources other meanings still may occur. (And as said, I am an amateur, not a professesional either in english language or linguistics.)-- Urjanhai ( talk) 19:50, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
I just saw this move and didn't notice the discussion. The term "Baltic Finnic" will end up confusing the group with Baltic peoples and is very rarely used... H2ppyme ( talk) 10:45, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Not a synonym. It may be a descriptive phrase -- the more westerly of the Finnic peoples/languages. If 'Finnic' has the broad sense, then it may be approx synonym to Balto-Finnic, but could also include at least Sami, and if 'Finnic' has its narrow sense, it means western Balto-Finnic. E.g., from your examples,
though also
though that same source also says,
which suggests they are not alternative terms.
But most either don't allow a preview or don't define the scope of the term/phrase. — kwami ( talk) 19:16, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
WP:MEDRS is not meant to cover genetic ancestry research which is not linked to any specific medical information, therefore sourced content on the genetic ancestry of Finnic ethnic groups can not be removed for that reason. Boynamedsue ( talk) 21:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Before starting this long-winded discussion, you should rather define, or better read the definitions you talk about. One cannot vote about a definition. 2A02:8108:9640:AC3:5508:6824:BCFA:951F ( talk) 10:59, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
This chapter is full of views and assertions, which are of no use for the reader. Obviously the authors have not been able to understand and describe the arguments. You are obviously unaware of newer glottochronological results (Starostin 2004, Honkola 2013), or biogenetic results (Lamnidis 2018, Tambets 2018), all speaking for an East - West decline. HJHolm ( talk) 11:14, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Finnic peoples which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RMCD bot 17:04, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
![]() | A fact from Baltic Finnic peoples appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 11 October 2008, and was viewed approximately 3,792 times (
disclaimer) (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
| ![]() |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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![]() | The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:
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![]() | On 23 August 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved to Finnic peoples. The result of the discussion was not moved. |
As a lay person with bad skills in english I will not try to edit this article, but one general remark must be made: If we want to make correct conclusions of the origin of the Baltic Finns, we should not disregard either the results of linguistic research or the results of genetic research. To claim that baltic finnic langues have been spoken in their current area in periods, when, according to the results of current linguistic research, they have not been spoken there, is thus doomed to be incorrect (at least if the linguistic research results won't chanche, which of course could be possible and has happened many times, but however at least now the results seem quite convincing, but of course they will be modified all the time and maybe also radically in some respect in some future stage). On the contrary then, such wiews should be found, that will not disregard either the results of genetic research, archaeological research, or the results of linguistic research or results in still other fields. And this, as far as I can see as a lay person, is excactly what has been tried to do in recent years by the younger generation of fennougrists, some of which are cited here, but not all. And because this recent research is cited in this article only randomly and not comprehensively, the overall picture in this article remains incomplete and partly misleading. If in some occassiopn I should have time, I could try to find some references but of course it would be better if this was done by someone who knows somewhat more about the subject. But the main message of this recent research, however, could be that populations may have changed there languages for several times. So it is well possible that there is continuity of settelement but the language has changed. -- Urjanhai ( talk) 11:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Where are Baltic Finns Curonians who later assimilated to Balts? -- 85.253.61.49 ( talk) 01:36, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Hey, is really necessary to start this article from Mesolithic period? Mesolithic goes to archeology, we don't have any evidence about the linguistic affiliations of people living on middle stone age. 94.101.2.146 ( talk) 12:44, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Google search results for "finnic people": 175,000 results. Google search results for "baltic finns": 38,000 results.
I suggest rewording the article title to "Finnic people"
SørenKierkegaard ( talk) 14:27, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
I came here from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Moving_"Baltic_Finns"_to_"Finnic_peoples", because, as an admin interested in linguistics, I fit user:Bishonen's suggestion as someone who could do the move. However, I see no consensus. So far, we have the following arguments:
It seems to me that #1 has been refuted by #3, which has not been refuted. #2 only examines one article. Still, if the defining article picture File:Lenguas fino-bálticas.png is correct, which situates the Karelians far from Karelia and the Baltic Sea, then "Baltic Finns" would feel to me less natural and precise. I think a way out of this dilemma is to follow the prescription of WP:COMMONNAME: "When there is no single, obvious name that is demonstrably the most frequently used for the topic by these sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering [the WP:CRITERIA] directly." It might also make sense to spot check the dates of articles using one or the other term; if a change of terminology happened fairly recently, then it would be an argument for the newer name. — Sebastian 16:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Google Books:
Baltic Finns: 3600 results
Finnic people: 2520 results
Finnic peoples: 4760 results
Google Scholar:
Baltic Finns: 403 results
Finnic people: 201 results
Finnic peoples: 609 results
Third, the source to (a single) Janhunen's article has 0 mentions of "baltic finns", "finnic people", or "finnic peoples"
The overwhelming result, from every source that Wikipedia suggests to base naming rules on, is to use Finnic peoples as the name for the article. Also Encyclopaedia Britannica uses that term.
Edit: In addition to everything above, we already use [Finnic languages], [Finnic mythology], [Finnic culture], [Finnic]. It makes absolutely no sense to keep using "Baltic Finns" if "Finnic peoples" the most widely used term in literature. The current name of this article does not follow the Wiki naming conventions. Also the University of Tartu uses this term.
@ Minnekon: @ Velivieras: @ Urjanhai: please comment SørenKierkegaard ( talk) 17:31, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: page moved. — Sebastian 07:02, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Baltic Finns → Finnic peoples – "Finnic peoples" is the most commonly used term when analyzed by Google search, Google Books search, Google Scholar search. It is also the default term on all other Finnic-related articles in Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and in University of Tartu. In addition to all literature, it is also the most suitable as an umbrella term because "Finns" generally only refer to people living in Finland. The article in question comprises several different nations with a Finnic background. SørenKierkegaard ( talk) 17:52, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Comment: After I married this talk page with its parent page, I noticed something odd: Why does
Talk:Baltic Finns
Talk:Finnic peoples/Archive 1
Talk:Baltic Finns have so much talk page content for a redirect with no edit history? Was a cut-paste move done somewhere? Was edit history suppressed/deleted??
Steel1943 (
talk)
02:49, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
@ Steel1943: Thank you for your patience, and for the steps. If I understand you correctly, you are thinking of something like the process at WP:HISTMERGE#An easy case or WP:HISTMERGE#Merging page histories of pages with many revisions (apart from the exclusion of talk pages). But unfortunately it seems to me that we are dealing with WP:HISTMERGE#A troublesome case, because we have a long overlap between the histories - from 2010, when Termer created the first article "Finnic peoples" (as can be seen in this article's history) till 2015, when the last edit of the now deleted article was done. To make matters worse, the deleted history is already very fragmentary, as can be seen from the last edits displayed (My annotations in green):
I had tried to undelete the history to "Talk:Finnic peoples/OldVersion", as recommended in WP:HISTMERGE#A troublesome case, but I got a database timeout error, and then I got cold feet since I wasn't sure that that would give me the opportunity to enter a different name, and I didn't want to mess up things more than they already are. Since I have no experience with anything even remotely as "troublesome", I think it would be better to ask for someone with relevant experience at AN/I. — Sebastian 23:09, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to revert the recent page moves so that the deleted history of the content fork can be recovered. wbm1058 ( talk) 01:57, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
There is only one entry in the deletion log: 17:46, 7 February 2018 SebastianHelm deleted page Finnic peoples (G6: Deleted to make way for move)
So I think it's safe to restore everything. Virtually no overlap in the talk histories, so Steel's move to archive 1 may be an OK solution. wbm1058 ( talk) 02:35, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
This isn't the first time I've seen such activity in an ethnic group article, and alas, probably isn't the last. – wbm1058 ( talk) 03:32, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi, how are Finnic peoples related to Balts in ethnic terminology? I mean genetically, maybe - but this page is not about genetics. See the Dutch people as an example - they have "Germanic peoples" and then very close neighbours from inside that grouping under related ethnic groups, because the Dutch are germanic people. I don't understand why "Balts" are listed under "related ethnic groups" here. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 17:21, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Someone has renamed the article from "Finnic peoples" to "Baltic Finns" without any consensus on the talk page. It was decided with overwhelming consensus a while ago to keep the page as Finnic peoples. I cannot undo that move on my own. Can an admin step in and help please? Blomsterhagens ( talk) 14:46, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
We had a long and fruitless discussion about this on my talk page, where it became clear that User:Blomsterhagens doesn't know the lit and can't be bothered to check, and isn't even sure what this article is about. "Finnic" and "Balto-Finnic" are often synonyms, but often they're not. The Volga Finns, Permians and even the Saami have been categorized as "Finnic". Possibly this is due to changing classification of the Uralic language family, or to whichever linguistic source an author chooses to use, rather that to any ethnographic conception. (But then it's common to substitute linguistic classification for ethnicity, even in otherwise RS's.) There were dozens of incoming links to "Finnic peoples" where it was the Volga Finns or Volga Finns + Permians who were referred to. I cleaned those up where I could. Sometimes in our sources "Finnic" means generically Baltic, Volga and Permic. This is common in historical sources and often it seems in genetics. Many of the remaining incoming links to 'Finnic' are ambiguous. Some speak of "Finnic and other Siberian peoples", which suggests they don't mean the Baltic Finns, or at least not just them. Anyway, given the very common use in the lit of 'Finnic' to mean something other or something more than just the Baltic Finns, having this article at 'Finnic peoples' will require that we police the incoming links for the lifespan of Wikipedia. I'm not going to do that, and since it appears the incoming links had never been cleaned up, I doubt anyone else would. Even if we had a volunteer, it wouldn't last forever. So we need an unambiguous name for this article. I don't really care what it is -- "Finnic peoples (...)" with some dab would be fine. But moving it back to plain "Finnic peoples" in contradiction to our other articles and their sources would be damaging to the encyclopedia. — kwami ( talk) 22:13, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Summary: Volga Finns, Saami people and Permic people are not Finnic peoples. They do not speak Finnic languages. The creation of a new Finnic peoples disambiguation page was incorrect. Baltic Finns is a less-common synonym in academic sources for Finnic peoples - as has been established on this talk page before. These changes from the last couple of days should be reverted. "Baltic Finns" should be renamed back to Finnic peoples, as it has previously been. The user who did the renaming has not provided any sources to explain their actions. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 23:17, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Here's a source from the University of Helsinki, placing Finnic specifically in the area of Finland and Estonia in the iron age. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:12, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Here is a source from the University of Tartu, talking about Finnic peoples. 1) It talks about Finnic peoples and Finnic languages in the same context, clearly defining one through the other. 2) Finnic languages are defined as Estonian, Finnish, Ingrian and Votic. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:18, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Here is a source from the Council of Europe. Quoting: "The Finnic peoples are the Finns, the Karelians, the Vepsians, the Izhorians, the Votians, the Estonians and the Livonians. All live in the Baltic region between Scandinavia and Continental Europe. Their languages are fairly closely related and speakers of one can usually understand the others rather well. The Karelians, Vepsians, Izhorians and Votians live within the borders of the Russian Federation." Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:30, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: page moved per consensus. — kwami ( talk) 23:24, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Baltic Finns → Finnic peoples – An editor moved the page without any discussion or consensus on the talk page. The article was previously named Finnic peoples after a consensus on the talk page. " Finnic peoples" is the accepted, most commonly used definition in academic literature, as is evident in both google scholar and google books. The editor who renamed the page has not provided any sources to justify the move. Blomsterhagens ( talk) 09:51, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Russians in northern European Russia share moderate genetic similarities with Finnic peoples, who lived in modern north-central European Russia and were partly assimilated by the Slavs as the Slavs migrated northeastwards. Such Finnic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians.
The existence of "Baltic Sea Finns" is based on controversial/fringe theories put forward by
Kalevi Wiik, theories that are very far from mainstream (a quote from the article about Wiik here on en-WP says it all: ""Wiik's controversial ideas are rejected by the majority of the scholarly community, but they have attracted the enormous interest of a wider audience."
), and we're writing an encyclopaedia, not a history blog. Do a search for "Sea Finns" in
this pdf, and you'll find that it's based on a book by Wiik. - Tom |
Thomas.W
talk
22:34, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm finding a fair number of sources at GBooks that seem to use this longer form of the name to better distinguish them from the Balts, and none of them mention Wiik. Of course, I can't be sure they have nothing to do with Wiik. But just because some fringe scientist uses a term, that doesn't mean the term is invalid. — kwami ( talk) 23:17, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Tom's correct that 'Baltic' normally refers to the Baltic Sea, but of course it could also refer to the Balts or the Baltic countries. I never thought of it being 'Baltic Sea-Finns', and that seems a rather tortured reading, but I suppose some people might get confused -- though it's hard for me to imagine that anyone would take it to mean they came from across the sea. But that's why we have the lead, to clarify such things. If it weren't a proper name, we'd just hyphenate: Baltic-Sea Finns. We could do that anyway, maybe as a parenthetical: Baltic Sea Finns (Baltic-Sea Finns). I'm not sure the potential for confusion is great enough to bother, but that should presumably help. The main question is whether this wording is common enough to include in the lead. I did an ngram search, [1] and it didn't find any instances of 'Baltic Sea Finns' or 'Baltic Sea Finnic'. 'Balto-Finns' got a bit of traction in the mid 1980s, but had pretty much died out by 2004 (though the data ends in 2008). 'Baltic Finns' was the dominant wording from 1800 to 1969, when 'Baltic Finnic' took off, then plummeted, the came back to near parity with 'Baltic Finns', but much of that will be referring to the languages. If you plug in 'Balto-Finnic', that takes off in the 1960s, but again is presumably for the languages. From here, [2] our current title doesn't get any hits, 'Balto-Finnic peoples' and 'Balto-Finns' gets a few, but 'Baltic Finns' is dominant. (The singular forms in 'people' don't get any hits.) Of course, that just in what Google Books has scanned, which may or may not be representative. Why the phrase 'Baltic Sea Finns' shows up in a GBooks search but not in Ngram I don't know -- perhaps Ngram only searches books that are wholly available, whereas a GBooks search also gets snippet views? — kwami ( talk) 18:43, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
We should stick to international academics, not local nationalists from ethnic groups with clearly migrant DNA. -- Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii ( talk) 15:21, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
The only question here is, what the correct name in english to the peoples in question, the exictence and definition of whom is clearly beyond doubt. Then, the only way is to look at realiable sources written in english by reliable scholars and what is the word that is used in these reliable sources. The term that is currently used of this language group (and thus also the peoples, becauce the language group is only undisputed and reliable way to define the group of peoles as well) seems to be "finnic".
In finnish language the word is "itämerensuomalaiset" which translates literally to " Baltic sea finns", but only because in finnish language there are no separate words wor "finnic" and "finnish", and therefore the clarification " Baltic sea" is needed in the finnish language word when spreaking about the whole group of peoples or languges.) But whether or not one should use some expression like this in english is beyond my competence as a non native speaker of english and not being a scholar in this field either. (I only study language history as a hobby.)
But however, what is the most essential point, is that terms like Finno-ugric and finnic, finno-permic, volga finnic etc. and the term " Finnic peoples" itself (i. e. in other meanings than that used in this article) are no longer undisputed as names of language groups (and thus as names of groups of peoples) within the uralic language family, although some of them may still be valid as areal terms. This is explained for example here: [3] (a draft for a chapter in some forthcoming book, I guess). Undisputed are only the seven subgroups of the uralic language family (one of which is "finnic"), but how these should be grouped into larger subgroups within the language family or should they be grouped into larger subgroups at all, or to what extent, is under dispute. And, because this is the case, then the primary meaning of the term "Finnic" seems to be more and more the Finnic languages (or here the Finnic peoples in the sense of this article, whatever should be the correct name of the article in English in the English language Wikipedia) because the referents of the other meanings of the term "Finnic" are or at least may be disputed and some of them may even be or turn to be obsolete. -- Urjanhai ( talk) 15:42, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
But still, if the primary meanining in the current reasrch situation would be more and more like that what I assumed above, in older sources other meanings still may occur. (And as said, I am an amateur, not a professesional either in english language or linguistics.)-- Urjanhai ( talk) 19:50, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
I just saw this move and didn't notice the discussion. The term "Baltic Finnic" will end up confusing the group with Baltic peoples and is very rarely used... H2ppyme ( talk) 10:45, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Not a synonym. It may be a descriptive phrase -- the more westerly of the Finnic peoples/languages. If 'Finnic' has the broad sense, then it may be approx synonym to Balto-Finnic, but could also include at least Sami, and if 'Finnic' has its narrow sense, it means western Balto-Finnic. E.g., from your examples,
though also
though that same source also says,
which suggests they are not alternative terms.
But most either don't allow a preview or don't define the scope of the term/phrase. — kwami ( talk) 19:16, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
WP:MEDRS is not meant to cover genetic ancestry research which is not linked to any specific medical information, therefore sourced content on the genetic ancestry of Finnic ethnic groups can not be removed for that reason. Boynamedsue ( talk) 21:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Before starting this long-winded discussion, you should rather define, or better read the definitions you talk about. One cannot vote about a definition. 2A02:8108:9640:AC3:5508:6824:BCFA:951F ( talk) 10:59, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
This chapter is full of views and assertions, which are of no use for the reader. Obviously the authors have not been able to understand and describe the arguments. You are obviously unaware of newer glottochronological results (Starostin 2004, Honkola 2013), or biogenetic results (Lamnidis 2018, Tambets 2018), all speaking for an East - West decline. HJHolm ( talk) 11:14, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Finnic peoples which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RMCD bot 17:04, 23 August 2023 (UTC)