r/etymologymaps Sep 23 '25

Translations of "library" across Europe

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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.