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ArchivesWhere does the surname Karkkainen come from?
My friend's last name is Karkkainen, and she knows it's from Scandinavia somewhere (leaning towards Finland). Does anyone know what it means or where exactly it comes from?
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The great Lord Google replied that the Finnish diminutive -nen has been used to form surnames from nicknames for about half a millenium, and kärkäs means eager. The odd phonetic shape of kärkäs may be because it is borrowed back from a Saami derivative of a Finnish loan of original Finnish kere/tä into Saami.
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