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gerdesjyesterday at 10:35 PM2 repliesview on HN

Ye is really Þe (Þ = thorn) and it seems that printers, back in the day, used y instead, probably to save money. So it was probably considered old school when printing became popular and wasn't worth getting excited about.

Agricola means farmer in Latin, is that an incidental? You mention Lutherian, so perhaps an affectation.


Replies

jltsirentoday at 12:02 AM

His father was a farmer. Commoners usually didn't have family names at the time (except in Eastern Finland), but he needed one when he went to school.

Sharlintoday at 12:04 AM

Yes, I know what ye is :) Similarly, the "olde Finnish" is usually not exactly historically accurate.

Agricola was born Mikael Olofsson/Olavinpoika, i.e. a simple patronymic surname. He assumed the Latin name when he started studies in a Latin school [1] in Viborg/Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia). He became interested in the Reformation and Renaissance humanism; later, as an ordained priest, he was sent to Wittenberg and studied directly under Luther himself. He was instrumental in executing the Reformation on the Finnish side of Sweden (then just a Swedish province; Finland as a political or geographical entity didn't really exist yet). Among other deeds, he translated the New Testament to Finnish from Luther's German translation (and besides the whole orthography, had to invent lots of new words in the process).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_school