Talk:Satakunta (historical province)

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[edit] Translation of Satakunta

Does "Satakunta" indeed mean just "hundred" in Finnish? I'm Finnish, and I've always thought that it means something like "about a hundred" (as in "there were about a hundred people in there" "siellä oli satakunta ihmistä". And for example tuhatkunta would mean "about a thounsand" and "kymmenkunta" means "about a ten".81.175.134.236 22:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

You are correct. However, the word can also be understood to mean sata-kunta, where kunta means a corporation, as in ylioppilaskunta, kihlakunta, maakunta, seurakunta, kadettikunta etc. In that case, the word Satakunta would roughly mean "corporation of hundred". In Svealand, the same meaning was carried by the word hundare (in Götaland, härad, in Finnish kihlakunta, in English hundred), of which the Satakunta is presumably a translation. This might signify that the Iron-Age Finns of Satakunta had a similar political division than their Swedish counterparts on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia. --MPorciusCato 08:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)