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Originally a variant form of -inen. The -i- was dropped in certain dialects, particularly nouns with more than two syllables prior to the suffix. The distinction between using -nen for nouns (including nouns with two or fewer syllables in the root) and -inen for adjectives is a later literary invention, resulting in what were originally two variants of the same suffix being artificially separated in meaning.[1]
Suffix
-nen
Forms diminutive nouns or terms expressing affection.
Surnames ending in -nen were first recorded in Savonia (and to a somewhat lessex extent Karelia) in the early 16th century, with -nen affixed to nicknames (Korhonen) and vernacular forms of given names (Heikkinen) after the ancestor or patriarch of a family. In the 19th century surnames were required of all Finns, and many new names were created by adding -nen to topographic terms (Ahonen) and to words describing natural phenomena (Aaltonen).
38% of Finns had a surname ending in -nen in 1985.
Should not be confused with -inen with which it may be conflated in colloquial speech and some dialects. For example, keltanen may appear to be kelta + -nen, but is actually a colloquial form of keltainen, itself kelta + -inen.
As with -inen, -nen nominals have a combining form that replace the suffix with an -s-, which is used whenever they are followed by another part in a compound word: e.g. ukkonen (> ukkos-) + myrsky = ukkosmyrsky.
Declension
Back vowel harmony declension (includes vowels a, o, u)
^ Hakulinen, Lauri. 1941–2000. Suomen kielen rakenne ja kehitys ('The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language'). Helsinki: Otava/Helsingin yliopisto.
Further reading
Sirkka Paikkala: Se tavallinen Virtanen, SKS 959 (2004), →ISBN