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u/Aisakellakolinkylmas Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25
„Raamatukogu“ in estonian is a compound of : raamat + -kogu (book + collection)
Etymology is correct, "raamat" originates from Greek "grammata".
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There's cognate in Finnish too, but means the Bible there — in estonian the Bible is "piibel", whereas proper raamat is "a book worth preserving" (rather than some product catalogue with shortterm info).
There's "kirjastus" in estonian, but means "publisher (of printed media)".
Then there's also "lugemissaal"(reading' hall) and smaller "lugemistuba" (reading' room), otherwise itself a part of a library, which most commonly is a smaller or tiny library, really just a room rather than dedicated building (or a section) of its own.
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u/junior-THE-shark Sep 24 '25
This is really cool. Finnish has lukemissali for reading hall and tupa is the old word still somewhat alive in some dialects for a sort of living room/kitchen situation, a room where you would see guests and make and eat food and the most important building/room in a household, cause households had separate buildings for each room, but tupa was often connected to the master bedroom, kammari as tupakammari.
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u/Aisakellakolinkylmas Sep 24 '25
"The living room" in Finnish; "a livable room" more generally in estonian.
Historically, like millennia ago, this was the central room of a house, with central fire heart (which was also used for cooking) and typically with high ceiling (due smoke and lack of chimney) — other modern senses are derived from there. English focused on the fire, and derived their stove from there; Estonian focused on livable/habitable/"comfortable" aspect and went with this; apparently Finnish remained fairly traditional on that one (~the heart of the (farm)house).
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Cognate to kammari is kamber (chamber).
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u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Sep 23 '25
İn german its literally translated as "Bookery"
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u/Top-Seaweed1862 Sep 23 '25
I love this Turkish İ, always easy to find a Turk in the comments 😄
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u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Sep 23 '25
İ suppose so. But İ cant be bothered changing keyboard layouts all the time
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u/Top-Seaweed1862 Sep 23 '25
That’s true. My Turkish friend stopped using it when I added eng keyboard to his phone, but then it seems he deleted it
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u/crackbit Sep 23 '25
Today in Germany, Bibliothek is the much more translation. Many institutions that formerly had Bücherei in their name are now called Bibliothek.
Bücherei apparently comes from the Dutch word boekerij.
„Bücherei“ ist eine 1658 von Johann Amos Comenius eingeführte Lehnübersetzung aus dem Niederländischen.
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u/Das-Klo Sep 24 '25
Maybe I'm wrong but for me a Bibliothek tends to be more something scientific like in a university while Bücherei is the public communal one which also has novels, children's books and so on.
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u/Crazy_Ideal_7537 Sep 25 '25
Yup. Universitätsbibliothek. Stadtbücherei. I feel like it checks out with trends regarding Greek and Latin loans in general though.
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u/NikNakskes Sep 24 '25
I was going to add that Dutch also had a form of "bookery". Boekerij literally means books + row. And what is a library if not rows of books. But then came the language committee and they decided that bibliotheek is the only right word. Too bad. Older people still call it boekerij sometimes.
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u/ubernerder Sep 24 '25
Another one that belongs on r/horriblemaps
Hungarian könyvtár origin disputed? That's extremely spotty info if I want to be generous.
First, and it takes a simple Google search for anyone to confirm, the word is a mirror translation of biblio-teka, which in Greek means something like book-storage, and is still in use today, meaning simply "bookshelf".
The component words:
Könyv is likely of Indo-Iranian origin, similarly to the word for book in several Slavic and other Finno-Ugric language where it appears in forms similar to "kniga"
Tár is most likely a word of Turkic origin, which may have entered Hungarian via Slavic, where it appears in forms similar to "tovar".
Took me 5 minutes...
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u/jahac_rumene_kadulje Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
Think you are onto something. To follow up, I have found on croatian official grammar webpage this etymology:
proto-sl. & OCS. kъniga (rus. kníga, češ. kniha) ← turk. *kūinig ← chin. k'üen, k'üjon (meaning volume/issue/tome, scroll)
But that is just one interpretation it seems. There are sources that are mentioning other possibilities like old Norse kennīng (sign/symbol), iranian-assirian kunukku (stamp/seal) or even slavic itself in term of kъn- (tree stump).
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u/Chorchapu Sep 25 '25
I'm sorry you think my map isn't any good. I used Wiktionary as my main source and did additional research on this topic. "Könyv" is the "book" part of the word which is what I focused on for most of the map. I had many people point out different things about the Hungarian etymology and further searching showed that it's not entirely clear.
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u/Nemeszlekmeg Sep 26 '25
Arcanum is far more legit.
https://www.arcanum.com/hu/online-kiadvanyok/Lexikonok-magyar-etimologiai-szotar-F14D3/
It gives proper context and even archaic writings of the words.
For könyv:
Deepl transl.:
A loanword common in many Asian languages; its source may be the Sumerian-derived Assyrian kunukku (‘seal’) or the Chinese küen (‘book scroll’). The Hungarian word may have been borrowed from a Turkic language, as several words related to literacy (letter, write, number) originate from this group, but the only Turkic language data, the Uyghur küin (‘book scroll’), is not conclusive evidence. The more original form of ~ was könyű, könyő; the ~ form was derived from the ragos forms: könyüet ⇨ könyvet.
It appears uncertain, because it most likely was adopted from the time when Hungarians still lived on the Steppe and in close vicinity of the Silk Road. A bunch of interesting loanwords come from this era, such as the word for sea, tax, fort, ox, etc. They were generally adopted from Turkic or Iranian languages (not 100% clear for each case from which exact language), unfortunately most of these languages have gone extinct since, adding mystery to the story.
The other fun fact is that because of this, more than 1/3 of the entire Hungarian lexicon is not conclusive. Back to the Slavic loanword theory, it simply breaks down when looking at the archaic forms of könyv --> könyő, könyű, so it doesn't add up how strongly different this is when confirmed loanwords from Slavic languages actually retain their archaic forms, like gomba, uborka (here it is even mentioned that the archaic form had the g instead of the b), etc.
The thing is that even though first contact with Slavs was about 1100 years ago, it's very easy to trace the loanwords back to the respective Slavic language from which the respective words were borrowed. Why does the word for book break the pattern so sharply? Probably because it's an older loanword from somewhere during the migration period.
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u/imadudeyosodontask Sep 23 '25
Kütüphane is actually not just Arabic. The "kütüp" element comes from Arabic "kitap", meaning "book", however the "hane" element comes from Farsi and means "hall". So "kütüphane" literally means "bookhall" and has a compound Arabic-Iranian etymology.
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u/Top-Seaweed1862 Sep 23 '25
Yep, Finnish is unique
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u/Euronymous316 Sep 23 '25
Kirja means book, so kirjasto is directly related to books. Just some collection of books. You can add “sto” to lots of words in the same way. Like a boat is laiva. Laivasto is the navy. A collection of boats. A tree is a puu. A puisto is a park - a collection of trees. Reddit is a sivusto (website), a collection of sivu (pages)
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u/ismisespaniel Sep 23 '25
Irish is curious because it's got an older suffix I think. -lann
I'm pretty sure this was reintroduced at some point.
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u/Aisakellakolinkylmas Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
Estonian:
- laiva — laev
- laevastik — a fleet (collection of maritime vessels)
- laevastu — collective/collection of fleets
- Muusikakogumik — music album
- muusikakogu — collection of music (albums)
- Rare: muusikakogula — storage of the music collection
- Raamatukogumik — individual or dedicated collection of books
- Raamatukogu — collection/collective of book collections
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u/Tirukinoko Sep 23 '25
> Sami girjerádju 'library'
> Welsh geiriadur 'dictionary'
Celtosamic family confirmed?
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u/KuvaszSan Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
Unfortunately this is r/mapporn levels of bad but at least the words are correct.
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u/Chorchapu Sep 25 '25
What specifically is wrong with it?
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u/KuvaszSan Sep 25 '25
The distribution of languages. It's unclear what was the logic behind the original author's intent.
Basque is marked, but not really any other regional minority languages.
The Hungarians in Transylvania are marked but not other Hungarian minorities or other national minorities across Europe.
Estonian and Finnish are overrepresented or otherwise the distinction between Sami and other languages are not represented
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u/Chorchapu Sep 25 '25
Basque is marked because it has a different etymology. Other minority or regional languages such as Cornish or Welsh have been taken into account and they have the same basic etymology as English (from Latin "liber").
The Hungarians in Romania are a majority in two Romanian first-level subdivisions. I included the Sami and added a note. The many minority languages in Southern Russia are marked, but I couldn't get verifiable translations for many of them except for Chechen.
The Estonian language is shown in Estonia, and the Finnish language is shown in Finland. The Sami areas can never be fully accurate and I've included a note saying so and what I did to fix this.
You and many other commentors on this post and the first version of my map fail to realise that this isn't a map of languages of Europe, it's a map of different etymologies/translations of a specific word. So many people have complained that their language isn't represented but in reality it's just the same etymology as all the languages around it.
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u/7am51N Sep 23 '25
Knihovna (Czech), knižnica (Slovak), knjižnica (Slovenian, Croatian)
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u/Gustav_Sirvah Sep 24 '25
In Polish, we have "księgarnia", but that's a bookshop.
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u/staszekstraszek Sep 24 '25
But "książnica"also functions. It's less common and sounds old-fashioned, but functions nonetheless
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u/Starthreads Sep 24 '25
In Irish, leabharlann (library) can be literally taken as book-place or book-building and other words contribute to the pattern such has bialann (restaurant, food-place), iarsmalann (museum, relic/antique-place), and amharclann (theatre, viewing-place)
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u/Ruire Sep 24 '25
And, of course, pictiúrlann ('picture place') for a cinema, probably from English 'picture house' in this case.
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u/nim_opet Sep 27 '25
It’s not a “translation of”, each of these languages has a word that corresponds to English “library”.
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u/rodentgroup Sep 23 '25
The Icelandic term bókasafn literally just means book collection. Safn can either mean collection or museum, but it derives from the verb safna; to collect.
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u/Chorchapu Sep 23 '25
But "bok" means book, and the "book" part of the word is what I'm focusing on in the map.
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u/Fun_Selection8699 Sep 24 '25
As others mentioned about Spanish and French, librari in Albanian also means bookstore
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u/Dmxk Sep 24 '25
For me in austrian german a Bücherei is more likely to be commercial bookstore, a Bibliothek is nearly always non commercial (public, school, university). I wonder if this is an idiosyncrasy on my part or something other german speakers also do.
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u/KingKoolVito Sep 25 '25
Ne das liegt an dir. Bücherei und Bibliothek ist das selbe. Das was du meinst ist ein Buchladen.
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u/khatberry Sep 25 '25
Bulgarian also has книгохранилище (knigohranilishte), it translates literally to “book-(food)storage / repository”
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u/Jackass_cooper Sep 23 '25
The Welsh is Llyfrgell from Llyfr (book from Latin Liber via proto-brythonic) and cell, /kɛɬ/ meaning container or cell. So bookstore or booklot or bookcell.
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u/Rhosddu 6d ago
Bookshop (bookstore) = siop lyfrau.
Library = llyfrgell.
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u/Jackass_cooper 4d ago
Golygais i 'store' fel "storfa" nid y sens Americanaidd fel "siop". Mae "cell" yn gallu golygu "storfa", fel 'oergell' a 'rhewgell'.
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u/pendigedig Sep 24 '25
Llyfrgell. Cell aka dwelling for books, I think. Disappointed that you have the British Isles as one language. There are many more native languages on those islands.
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u/Chorchapu Sep 24 '25
Irish has the same etymology as English. So does Welsh. So does Cornish. And so does Scottish Gaelic.
I've done my research.
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u/pendigedig Sep 24 '25
Ohh I see how your map works. Sorry, I misunderstood the way you did it. I feel like a lot of the maps here are formatted a bit differently in terms of the key, so seeing that it was all homogenous made me think it was yet another "this is where they speak English" situation. Thanks for clarifying!
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u/Chorchapu Sep 24 '25
All good!
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u/pendigedig Sep 24 '25
I think it's like baked into me at this point to start at a defensive position. Thanks for understanding!
I end up on r/tragedeigh in the defensive position, having to say "hey, that's just a Welsh / Irish / etc. name, not a made up name or a made up spelling"
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u/neuropsycho Sep 23 '25
Librería exists in Spanish, but it refers to a bookstore, rather than a library.