Spotted these 2 posts recently and wondered how Estonia’s name for us is so similar to Cymru and how they consider our language to be weird, especially considering how far away they are from us. Is anybody aware of why this might be the case? Just seems very random to me 😂
by BrythonicTheHedgehog
5 comments
In Finnish the official name is “Kymri”
I’d say it’s very respectful that they use Cymru as the basis for the name as opposed to *Welah and all the associated baggage, irony, etc. Perhaps it’s simply based on the idea of using endonyms versus exonyms, or perhaps it was a desire to show solidarity with other cultures they saw as being in a similar geopolitical situation to theirs.
As for the whole weird thing, Cymric orthography looks pretty distinct and has a rhythm that makes it seem unusual at first- I’d say the impressions about it garnered from others without actually having encountered it probably have quite an impact, as does the frequent misunderstanding about the fact we have, er, more vowels than quite a few other European languages.
Anyway, those are my very general thoughts.
As someone that has spent a lot of my adult age in Estonia, I can assure you that probably 90% of Estonians dont have a clue what ‘Wales is’ and the other 10% being Football fans.
Actual Estonian here. First time in my life I’ve heard the name “Kõmrimaa”. Never seen it being used anywhere, Wales is just called Wales.
My main takeaway is that the Irish call us “Little Britain” 😭
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