Talk:Mikael Agricola
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This is another Finland-Swede whom the Finnish nationalists at English Wikipedia try to make into a Finn. And his name was Mikael Olofsson, not Mikael Olavinpoika (which is simply a direct translation to Finnish of his name Mikael Olofsson, Mikael Son of Olof). Den fjättrade ankan 18:08, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC) Den fjättrade ankan 18:08, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Please kindly submit us further evidence about Agricola's language and his parents' language, as well as in which particular socken and by (village) he was from. such information may help to determine the factual content.
I must remind you that it is of no big evidential value to know in which form his name was written in contemporary documents, since most of those were kept in Swedish anyway, and practically nothing in Finnish. Latin was the other alternative.
When having researched bunches of old church archives of Finland (for example for genealogical purposes) I have found endless number of persons having Swedish name forms ("Mikkel Olofsson") in those writings, but in cases where it is fully clear that they have been fully Finnish-speaking persons. Such facts can be known for example from the fact in which village the person lived.
Even in cases where the name happened to be a Finnish (or in Carelia, Russian-like) name, without Swedish equivalent, the priest had written it a bit oddly, like to conform to swedish language. not Marya, not Teuto, not Pasi, not Vehka (but Weck or Veck..) and of course the sveticized Natascha.
Thus, only your word that his name was "Mikkel Olofsson" instead of "Mikael Olavinpoika", is of no value. We need substantiation of that claim. Likelihoods or certainties.
213.243.157.114 22:30, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Actually, this debate whether he was from Swedish-speaking home or Finnish-speaking hime, is ages old.
However, let me ask: How would Agricola, if fully Swedish, learned as fullständig (perfect) Finnish as he showed and needed when making his literary works. After all, at that time,
(1) there existed no "written Finnish". Thus, no books or likes for him to learn Finnish from. However, he collected and made "written Finnish" into books by himself.
(2) Finnish was nowhere taught.
Agricola in his school, university and later years lived in environment which used Latin and Swedish. Not Finnish. All people coming to contact with this more or less high-rankin person, had an incentive to use Swedish or Latin, not Finnish. Agricola himself had practically no incentives to learn Finnish, if he did not have a command of it already.
However, Agricola is known to have an unerred and full command of Finnish. And he needed it to make his works. He even invented new words, since there were not all needed concepts in contemporary Finnish. Words invented by him were no sveticisms, they suited rather well to Finnish language. A Swede by domestic language would probably have made sveticisms.
The answer must be, in extremely high likelihood, that he was either Finnish-speaking or fully bilingual. 213.243.157.114 23:07, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)