Industrial urbanization, working-class lads and slang toponyms in early twentieth-century Helsinki

Abstract

The article investigates the linkages between urban transformation and informal verbalizations of everyday spaces among male juveniles from Sörnäinen (a working-class district in Helsinki) in 1900-39. Sörkka lads' biographically and contextually varying uses of slang names mirrored their itineraries across the city in the search of earning and spare-time opportunities. As a simultaneously practical and stylistic street language, the uses of slang both eroded (in uniting bilingual male juvenile groups) and strengthened (as with providers and teachers, workingclass girls, upper-class urbanites and rural newcomers) existing socio-spatial boundaries. Unlike in the late nineteenth century Stockholmska slang studied by Pred, openly irreverent toponymic expressions vis-à-vis the hegemonic conceptions of urban space were relatively few in early Helsinki slang. 2 E.g. D. Garrioch, 'House names, shop signs and social organization in Western European cities', Urban History, 21 (1994), 20-48; M. Azaryahu, 'The power of commemorative street names', Environment and Throughout the article, we utilize the following etymological key to indicate which language(s) each slang toponym mentioned apparently stemmed from, as well as a decade of its first known usage: S = Swedish, F = Finnish, R = Russian, E = English, O = other language; 1800 = prior to twentieth century, 00 = 1900s, 10 = 1910s, 20 = 1920s, 30 = 1930s. Aström, Samhällsplanering och Regionsbildning i Kejsartidens Helsingfors (Helsingfors, 1957), 42-316; Waris, Työläisyhteiskunnan, 13-29, 108-22.

Reaaliaikainen tutkimus Helsingin puhekielestä

“…Ensimmäisen kerran niin tapahtui Helsingin työläiskaupunginosissa 1800luvun loppupuolella ja 1900luvun alussa, kun maalta muuttaneiden työläisten pojat alkoi vat puhua Stadin slangia, joka erotti heidät mur teita puhuvista vanhemmistaan ja kirjakielistä puhekieltä vaatineista opettajista. (Paunonen, Vuolteenaho & Ainiala 2009. ) ten lähes kirjakielistä puhekieltä, toisaalta vanhojen työläisten murteellista puhekieltä.…”

Place Names and Identities

“…The term memorial landscape is used by some geographers (Dywer & Alderman 2008) when examining the landscape as a text based on geographical and cultural processes. As more and more people live in urban areas there is now an increasing focus on the role of collective memory in urban space (Rose-Redwood et al 2008), as well as on the role of urban place names as group building identity (Pounonen et al 2009). Landscape identity may thus (in my context) be defined as "oneness between self and landscape as experienced by human beings in given circumstances".…”

A slightly slummier area? Negotiations of place‐bound identities through social spatializations and unofficial toponyms

“…Even though the names Vanha Vuosaari ("Old Vuosaari") and Uusi Vuosaari ("New Vuosaari") and their variants were predictable, they signified social topicalities related to the well-recalled aspects of local urban transformation (cf. Paunonen, Vuolteenaho & Ainiala, 2009). However, the widespread local currency of Old and New Vuosaari did not translate into likemindedness or a disappearance of internal frontiers between those who used these unofficial names.…”

“…As distinct from irreverent forms of urban naming in slang (see e.g. Paunonen, Vuolteenaho & Ainiala, 2009;Pred, 1990), our focus is on the uses and meanings of fairly ordinary or predictable unofficial toponyms in interaction.…”