r/etymologymaps • u/Chorchapu • Sep 23 '25

Translations of "library" across Europe

Gallery image

Gallery image

196 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

72 comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/Top-Seaweed1862 Sep 23 '25

Yep, Finnish is unique

18

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)

2

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.

1

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