Turku - Name

Name

The Finnish name Turku originates from an Old East Slavic word, tǔrgǔ, meaning "market place". The word turku still means "market place" in some idioms in Finnish. The Swedish word for "market place" is torg, and was probably borrowed from Old East Slavic, but it was present already in Old Swedish.

The Swedish name Åbo seems easy to explain, as it contains the words å ("river") and bo ("nest, dwelling") which could mean something like "the house by the river". However, etymologists think this explanation is probably false, as the name is old and there are no other similar names. There is however an old legal term called "åborätt" (meaning roughly "right to live at"), which gave citizens (called "åbo") the inheritable right to live at land owned by the crown.

It has been suggested that the Finnish name Turku originally refers to the market place, while the Swedish name Åbo originally refers to the castle.

In Finnish, the genitive of Turku is Turun, meaning "of Turku". The Finnish names of organizations and institutes of Turku often begin with this word, as in Turun yliopisto for the University of Turku.