On this page, you can find the names of famous places in Finnish. Included are popular places for tourists to visit all over the world. It includes historical places, natural wonders and feats of human innovation.

My list might be biased in ways I’m not aware of, because I’ve based it on random website listings of places worth visiting. I myself haven’t traveled very much, so most of these places aren’t familiar to me at all. Still, I thought it might be nice for people learning Finnish to see what these places are called in Finnish.

I’m not giving any additional information about these famous locations such as the country they’re in. If you’re interested, I do have a separate page with the Finnish names of the 200 most populated countries in the world here.

1. Naming conventions

The naming conventions for famous places in Finnish are different than in English.

1.1. Capitalization

English uses capital letters for each of the words of the place names (e.g. Sydney Opera House). Finnish only capitalizes the first part, while the common noun describing the type of place will start with a lowercase letter (e.g. Sydneyn oopperatalo).

1.2. Word order

Finnish generally starts place names with a proper noun depicting the location or person of the famous place, followed by a descriptive noun. For example, “Sydneyn oopperatalo” has the city name Sydney, followed by the common noun oopperatalo, which describes the function of the building. The Kennedy Space Center (Kennedyn avaruuskeskus) follows the same pattern: the proper noun Kennedy refers to John F. Kennedy, followed by the common noun avaruuskeskus, which describes the function of the building.

For those two examples, English word order matches up perfectly with the Finnish version. However, English is less consistent. While “Kennedy Space Station” follows the “ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴ + ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏᴜɴ” naming convention, “Temple of Artemis” consists of “ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏᴜɴ + ᴏꜰ + ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴ”. A third convention English also allows for is “ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴ + ᴀᴘᴏꜱᴛʀᴏᴘʜᴇ + ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏᴜɴ”, as in “Saint Basil’s Cathedral”.

1.3. The genitive case

The genitive case (e.g. Sydneyn “of Sydney”) is used in very many names of famous places in Finnish.

English has two linguistic methods that match up with the Finnish genitive. It allows us to use either “apostrophe s” or putting the place name at the end of the phrase with “of” in front of it. For example, for “Pyhän Vasilin katedraali”, English has opted for the name “Saint Basil‘s Cathedral”. Other options that are well within the English conventions could have been “Cathedral of Saint Basil” or plainly “Saint Basil Cathedral.”

2. Placename/person + genitive + descriptive common noun

The first group of famous places in Finnish I’m presenting follows the most common naming convention. These names consist of two elements: 1) the name of a city, area or person in the genitive case and followed by 2) a descriptive noun.

3. Names with a hyphen

In addition to the very popular “ᴘʀᴏᴘᴇʀ ɴᴏᴜɴ + ɢᴇɴɪᴛɪᴠᴇ + ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏᴜɴ”, Finnish also has a small number of places with a hyphen. For example, the Eiffel Tower is called “Eiffel-torni” in Finnish.

4. Direct quotes of location names

The names of some famous locations will look exactly the same as in English. This style of adopting words into Finnish acknowledges that these locations are icons in their own right and don’t need to be translated. Sometimes there are some very small differences betwee the English and the Finnish term. I’ve marked those in green in the table below.

Note that – if you do want to make it completely clear that the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum – you can use add a hyphen followed by the descriptive word: “Taj Mahal -mausoleumi“. While the official name is plain and simple “Taj Mahal”, this is a tactic often employed to make sure the other person knows what type of place we’re talking about. Some other examples for the table below: “Big Ben -kellotorni“, “Atomium-monumentti“, “Gateway Arch -muistomerkki“, “Borobudur-pyhäkkö” and “Hagia Sofia -museo“. Add a space in front of the hyphen when the location consists of more than one word.

Note that place names that have been adopted into Finnish as direct quotes don’t necessarily come from English. Thus, the Finnish name can be what it is in the original language of the monument, rather than what it is called in English. Below are some random locations for which this is the case:

5. Other naming conventions

When creating Finnish names for foreign places, Finns have tried out different naming conventions, so there is some variation in how foreign places have been named. This is true in English as well, but to a much larger extent. English is a very “free” language in the way it forms words.

The following table contains several groups:

That’s all for this list of Finnish names of many famous places in the world!

Related posts:

Places in the City – Finnish Vocabulary Nationalities in Finnish – Minkämaalainen sinä olet Places ending in LA or LÄ Country names in Finnish – Mistä sinä olet kotoisin?