Some nouns allow you to add -tar/-tär to them in order to make the person depicted female. The base word is generally a word that doesn’t explicitly reveal the gender of the person. Learn some words ending in -tar right here!

Do note however that not all of these -tar words are actively used in regular communication situations. While you CAN specify that someone is a female salesperson, there is rarely a need to do so.

In addition, there are at least a couple of words ending in -tar that don’t seem to have a male counterpart.

• The word “tytär” (aka tyttö) means “daughter”
• The word “kaunotar” means “a beauty”
• The word “kohtalotar” means “destiny” (kahtalo means the exact same thing)

The word sisar is the only word of its kind: there are no other Finnish words as far as I can tell that end in -ar but don’t have -tar.

The Inflection of Words Ending in -tAr

Words ending in -tAr belong to wordtype B, so they have “reversed” consonant gradation. Their basic form and singular partitive will have one -t-. The plural genitive ending can be added to both the weak consonant stem (e.g. kuningatarten) or the strong vowel stem (e.g. kuningattarien).

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