Finnish and English don’t match up perfectly when it comes to which words will be written with a capital letter. In fact, these rules differ from language to language. For example, German capitalizes all nouns. In this article, we’ll look at the rules for capital letters in Finnish (iso alkukirjain).

Have I gone into too much detail? Probably! I usually do, don’t I?

1. The first word of a sentence

A new sentence will always start with a capital letter. This is also the case for direct quotes when they placed after the main clause.

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2. Expressions of time

Finnish uses lowercase letters for most expressions of time. This includes the days of the week and months as well as big celebrations like Easter. In this aspect Finnish differs completely from English, where many expressions of time are written with a capital letter.

Do note that if the name of the day contains a proper noun, that proper noun will be written with a capital letter.

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3. Names of events

3.1. Historical events

The names of historical events will be written with a lowercase letter in Finnish. If the country or city they’re hard in is included in the name, that proper noun will be capitalized.

3.2. Yearly events and competitions

For events and competitions, words like olympialaiset will be written with a lowercase letter. If the name includes a country or city, you will use a capital letter for the country name. If there’s a common noun in the name (such as elokuvajuhlat “film festival”), you will use a lowercase letter for that. Thus, we get “Cannesin elokuvafestivaali“. For events that have been translated directly from another language without any changes, you will use the international spelling.

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4. Names of people and animals

4.1. Finnish names

First names and surnames, as well as nicknames and pet names, are proper nouns. For names with a hyphen (e.g. Anna-Leena), you will use use an uppercase letter for both parts.

4.2. International names

The guideline for international names with multiple parts is to use the rules of capitalization from the language in question.

4.3. Words for family relationships

The English and Finnish guidelines are different when it comes to expressing family relationships. Both the use of capital letters and the word order are different in Finnish.

There is one “mother” everyone knows of course. She has such a famous name that the “mother” part is inherently part of her name. Thus, both in English (Mother Theresa) and Finnish (Äiti Teresa) you will use two capital letters. The same is true for the Virgin Mary (Neitsyt Maria).

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5. Titles and professions

In English, for royal titles, you will use a capital letter when the title is directly in front of the name of the person. In Finnish, you typically don’t use a capital letter at all. The exception is for titles like “Sir” for people who are knighted, which follow the English rules because they’re borrowed as-is from English.

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6. Nationalities

Adjectives ending in -lainen/läinen describe nationalities, or the location or origin of someting. These will be written with a lowercase letter in Finnish. Thus, while the country Etelä-Afrikka is capitalized in Finnish, the adjective eteläafrikkalainen won’t be capitalized.

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7. Languages

We can tell apart “Finland” and “Finnish” quite easily because countries are capitalized and languages are not. For dialects, we can either say the area a dialect is spoken in (which will be capitalized) or make an adjective out of it (which will not be capitalized).

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8. Animals and plants

The Finnish names of animals will start with a lowercase letter. This is true regardless of whether the name starts with a word that’s actually a proper noun. For example, the breed suomenhevonen starts with “Suomen“, a proper noun. Because it’s written as one word and refers to an animal, you won’t use a capital letter in Finnish.

For the scientific Latin name of animals and plants, the genus (ie. the first part) will have a capital letter, while the species (ie. the second part) will be written with a lowercase letter.

For plants, the everyday name will be written with a lowercase letter. The names of cultivated plant varieties have a capital letter. This is especially notable for apples: they have been created by someone and, thus, they are trademarked.

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9. Food names

Regular food names are written with a lowercase letter, but you will use a capital letter for the brand name. There are some foods which have a name starting in a proper noun. However, because they are written as one word (e.g. ranskankerma rather than Ranskan kerma) you will not capitalize them.

9.1. Cheeses

Cheeses are complicated in English: If a cheese is named after a city or country, it’s capitalized (e.g. Brie, Camembert, Gouda). Other cheeses aren’t capitalized (e.g. cheddar, feta, mozzarella).

In Finnish, you luckily won’t need to know what a cheese is named after. The type of cheese will not be capitalized. If you are talking about the manufacturing company, however, the brand name will be capitalized. The only cheese that might be important to mention separately would be Aura cheese. While in spoken Finnish, this type of cheese is called aurajuusto, the brand name is just Aura.

9.2. Grapes and wines

Grapes and wines are another confusing group. In Finnish, grape varieties have a capital letter in their name. In contrast, the name of the wine made from the grape will have a lowercase letter in Finnish. Trademarked store names for wines are capitalized. English has its own, completely different rule. In English, you will only use a capital letter for wines named after regions.

9.3. Other beverages

For beverages in general, you need to ask yourself if the name is a trademark or a generic name. The names of most drinks are just common nouns, so they’ll be written with a lowercase letter. For example, cola is written with a lowercase letter, while Coca-Cola will be capitalized. English and Finnish rules for capitalization match up very well in this case.

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10. Publications

There are all kinds of publications, so here’s a short list:

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11. Product names and companies

In both English and Finnish, you will write the names of products and companies with a capital letter. These will be written the way they’ve been registered.

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12. Associations and organizations

For associations, you will use capital letters if they have been registered officially with capital letters. In this case, it doesn’t matter if the second word is a common noun or not. This rule is specific for companies and associations. As such, the rules for the names of buildings (e.g. Sydneyn oopperatalo — see section 18.2.) differ from the rule mentioned here.

How do you know how an association has been registered? By googling of course!

12.1. Finnish organizations

12.2. International organizations

The names of some international organizations are translated to Finnish, while others aren’t. If they’re translated, they usually follow the Finnish rules. This means the first word will be capitalized but – if subsequent words are common nouns – those are written with a lowercase letter. If the name is adopted into Finnish without translating, they will follow the international rules for capitalization.

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13. Government institutions and administrative bodies

To be honest, I suggest you google public and governmental institutions and organization when you need to know if they’re written with a capital letter. It’s confusing. For example, keskusrikospoliisi and suojelupoliisi are usually written with a lowercase letter, while Poliisihallitus and Rajavartiolaitos get capital letters. All of those are police-related institutions.

There’s a tendency for words ending in -hallitus and -laitos to get capitalized, but this isn’t true for all such words. More about those in section 13.2.

13.1. Ministries, Ministers and other political appointments

Finnish and English have different rules for the names of ministries and ministers. In Finnish, both the names of ministries (e.g. ulkoministeriö) and the titles of the ministers (e.g. ulkoministeri) are always written with a lowercase letter. In English, it depends if you’re talking about a specific ministry (e.g. the Minister/Ministry of Defence) or just ministries in general (e.g. the ministries/ministers).

13.2. Certain Finnish public bodies

The main rule in Finnish is that government institutions ending in -arkisto, -hallitus, -kassa, -keskus, -laitos, -rahasto and -virasto will be written with a capital letter. If the name has more than one word, only the first word is capitalized. I’ve added links to the English Wikipedia page, in case you want to learn more about these governmental bodies.

Note that for the English translation, you will see the words Finnish and Finland, while the Finnish version doesn’t have these added. Within Finland, there is the assumption that we are talking about the Finnish institution. Thus, we have no need for “Suomen” in these names.

13.3. Other governmental and administrative bodies

I’m not exactly clear on the reasoning for having separate rules for section 13.2. and this section. The names of the highest administrative bodies of the central government, courts and police authorities are written with a lowercase letter in Finnish.

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14. Political parties and their followers

For political parties, Finnish often has a more casual name for the official name of a party. The official name will be written with a capital letter, while the nickname will have a lowercase letter. You can find a list of these here. For political parties consisting of two words, Vihreä liitto is currently the only one with a lowercase letter for the second word. All the other parties have two uppercase letters (e.g. Suomen Keskusta “the Center Party”).

In English, the choice between uppercase and lowercase letters depends on what we mean by the term. A lowercase letter will be used when referring to e.g. “republican” as a general system of political thought (republican sentiment in Ireland). An uppercase letter will be used when Republican is used in reference to specific political parties with this word in their names (a Democratic versus Republican Party stalemate).

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15. Ideologies and philosophies

Ideologies, philosophies, theories, movements, and schools of thought are not capitalized in Finnish, In English, you do capitalize them when the name derives from a proper name.

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16. Religions

Within the topic of religion, there are multiple different groups.

16.1. Names of religions

The names of all the different religions are all written with a lowercase letter in Finnish. You can find a longer list of religions here.

Notable exception: In Finnish, all official publications released by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are written with full capitals (Myöhempien Aikojen Pyhien Jeesuksen Kristuksen Kirkko). When following the official guidelines, we’d have only two capitals in the name: myöhempien aikojen pyhien Jeesuksen Kristuksen kirkko.

16.2. Names of followers

16.3. Names of clergy

In Finnish, you won’t use a capital letter for the titles of clergy of different religions regardless of how they are used. In English, the official guideline is to capitalize the first letter when the word is placed before a name as a title, and to use a lowercase letter in other situations.

16.4. Names of deities

In English, names of deities like God, Allah and Zeus should always be capitalized. The reasoning is that we’re showing their importance in their respective religions.

In Finnish, the word “jumala” is the topic of some discussion. Some sources feel it depends if the religion has one God or multiple Gods. There’s also some variation regarding god being either a supernatural creature or the deity of a religion. You can read more about this in Finnish here and here.

The names of people from religious texts, such as Judas or Job, are capitalized because they’re the names of people.

Common nouns will be written with a capital letter as well, when they are used to refer to Christianity’s God

16.5. Names of religious texts

Holy books of different religions are also capitalized. Note that the official guidelines says that the “full name” of the Bible in Finnish is “Pyhä raamattu“, where you only capitalize the P rather than both words.

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17. Place names

17.1. Continents, countries and other areas

There is nothing special about the main rule concerning places such as continents, countries and cities: they all require a capital city, just like in English.

Official place names with a hyphen will get a capital letter for both words.

17.2. Places with multiple-part names

Some placenames will have multiple parts. For these, there are multiple rules. Firstly, names that have been adopted without getting translated, will have the international rules for capital letters.

Finnish multipart place names will have capital letters for all proper nouns they include. This is the case, for example, for places named after famous Finnish people. If these place names include common nouns (such as the word katu “street”), these will not be capitalized.

Many place names do get translated to Finnish. For these, you have to look at each word separately. Proper nouns (such as names or cities) will get a capital letter, while common nouns (such as the word “ocean”) will not have a capital letter in Finnish. You can find more examples of such places here.

17.3. The compass points

In Finnish, the compass points are written with a lowercase letter (e.g. West is länsi and East is itä). However, when the official name of a geographical location starts with a compass point (e.g. Länsi-Suomi), we will capitalize it.

In English, terms like “eastern Asia” and “northern Africa” generally don’t have the compass point capitalized, except when the compass point is part of the proper name of the place (such as South Africa and Eastern Europe). You can find conflicting guidelines for this online but, luckily, I’m going over the Finnish rules rather than the English ones!

17.4. Hyphened words with a common noun

Proper nouns get a capital letter, common nouns don’t. This means that the FIRST part can have a lowercase letter. For example, the prefix nyky- just means “current, modern”. As a whole, “modern Finland” is not the name of a geographical area, so we will have a lowecase n for nyky– but an uppercase S for Suomi.

17.5. Provinces, districts and states

In English, you will capitalize the words Province, District and State when they are part of the formal name of the place. If they are just used descriptively, or phrased differently, you will use a lowercase letter.

In Finnish, words like maakunta and osavaltio are just common nouns, so you won’t capitalize them at all.

18. Names of buildings

In part, English and Finnish match up when writing the names of buildings: you use lower case in both languages when you are talking about buildings in general. The difference between the languages becomes apparent when writing about unique buildings.

18.1. Generic buildings

In Finnish, when there is more than one of a building, you will use a lowercase letter. There are, for example, many police stations and city halls.

18.2. Official, unique buildings

The official name of a single, unique building will be written with a capital letter. There is, for example, only one “National Theatre” that can call itself Kansallisteatteri, so it gets a capital letter. I find this a difficult rule, because how would I know that there’s only one national theater as an immigrant? These are the types of place names where I would google to be sure.

English as Finnish differ when it comes to unique buildings that are made up of common nouns. English will capitalize common nouns like “cathedral” when you’re referring to the full name of a cathedral. Finnish will use a lowercase letter for tuomiokirkko even in the official name because this word is just a common name. Thus, “Helsingin tuomiokirkko” is Helsinki Cathedral” in English because it’s the name of a specific cathedral.

Another difficulty is that companies can register their name with multiple capital letters. For example, “Pirkkalan jäähalli” is written with a lowercase letter when you mean the building, while the registered company is called “Pirkkalan Jäähalli Oy”. The general instruction is to check/ask how the company themselves writes their name and follow their lead.

18.3. Schools, faculties and departments

In both Finnish and English, you will use a lowercase letter for words like “school” and “faculty” when you’re using them as common nouns. However, if you’re mentioning the full name of the school, Finnish and English no longer follow the same rules. English chooses to capitalize all the words in the official names of schools, departments and such. Finnish will capitalize any proper nouns (e.g. Tampere, Cambridge) that are present in the official name, but common nouns (e.g. koulu, laitos, opisto) will be written with a lowercase letter even when used in the official name of the school.

This isn’t a completely reliable rule, as schools can use capital letters regardless of the general rules, when they register themselves officially. For that reason, wer can see that the official name of Oulun Aikuiskoulutuskeskus breaks the guidelines by using two capital letters, while Länsi-Suomen aikuiskoulutuskeskus has been registered according to the guidelines.

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19. Galaxies, planets and stars

The names of galaxies, planets and stars will be written with a capital letter. I have a vocabulary article about space and planets here.

Unlike in English, if the name has two parts, the second part won’t have a capital letter if it’s just a common nouns like “cloud” or “bear”.

Just like in English, the Sun, Moon and Earth will be written with capital letters if we’re referring to the celestial object (e.g. the Sun of our own galaxy). If we’re just talking about how the sun is shining, no capital will be used.

20. Zodiac signs

In Finnish, the signs of the zodiac will start with a lowercase letter in Finnish, while the constellations will start with an uppercase letter. This is also true for other types of zodiacs, like the Chinese zodiac.

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21. Politeness

Finnish does not normally express politeness with a capital Sinä or Te. This is technically possible, but unnecessary because a lowercase letter is not considered to be impolite. You can find capital You in some promotional correspondence, where the seller addresses the customer. It’s also sometimes used in formal invitations to events such as weddings.

At the beginning of a letter, it is possible to write the title of the recipient with a capital letter. Just note that using a lowercase letter is always possible as well and isn’t considered impolite.

22. Special mentions

Last but not least, the Finnish guidelines recommend always writing “Internet” with a capital letter.

I will also add Uusi kielemme here. I’ve made the choice to follow the Finnish guidelines for my own website. Thus, the first word of the name is capitalized, but kielemme isn’t because it’s a common noun.

Internet links with more information

There are a lot of pages on the internet that go over when to use capital letters in Finnish. You can find Finnish sources by google “iso alkukirjain“. Also effective is writing the word you’re wondering about and adding “isolla vai pienellä” to your search term. The links below cover things I’ve partly glossed over or not mentioned at all.

Related posts:

The Compass – Etelä Pohjoinen Itä Länsi Nationalities in Finnish – Minkämaalainen sinä olet Country names in Finnish – Mistä sinä olet kotoisin? Names of Famous Places in Finnish