Talk:Gulf of Bothnia

Orientation of Maps

Is this really relevant? It's not specific to the G of B at all. The reference to world discoveries by the Portuguese seems particularly out of place to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Panpaniscus (talk • contribs) 23:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Ottar and Orosius

Some historians consider Ottar refer to Gulf of Bothnia when he uses Cwen sea (9th c.). It is possible too that Claussön's usage Mare Gotticus (15th c.) refers to Gulf of Bothnia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rogper (talk • contribs) 16:37, 28 July 2005 (UTC).

Well, then you could include that in the article. :) - ulayiti (talk) 17:08, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Where does the "th" come from? Clearly not moderen Swedish or Finnish. An old Norse þ?--Henrygb 21:33, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Added link to Kven Sea in the article. --Drieakko 06:01, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Name

Hello 4th avenue, I found your changes somewhat confusing, and I was confused, especially after seeing your bad joke comment, which someone was kind enough to remove. I took you for an editor rather than a vandal. On careful study of the changes you were attempting to make I think I see what you were trying to do. It is in fact what I was hoping someone would do, supply additional possibilities and information. Nobody seems to want to change the text so I did it.

You did not support your ideas in the text. I presume from your joke that you know a great deal about the subject and were just going to enlighten us when you got tired, as the typos indicate. I suggest you take the opportunity now. What language still had the thorn in the botten? What do the Swedish etymological dictionaries say? I wish I knew some Swedish. I presume you must know some; you speak as though you do. I look forward to being further educated by your next revision of the article.Dave 06:14, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Sources regarding the name

The only source in the section about the name, an etymological dictionary from 1922, does not support any of the claims in that section. Yes, there is a paragraph in the source where it says that "botten" comes from "botn" which is related to English word "bottom". But on the same page of this etymological dictionary, there also is a paragraph on the actual topic of this article... which goes

"Bottenhavet, Bottniska viken (t. ex. Dalin 1747), förr Botn(en), till fsv. botn i betyd, ’vik’ (jfr isl. fjarðarbotn ävensom förf. Sjön. 1: 118 t.); samma ord som föreg. Härtill Norr-, Väster- o. Österbotten."

I'm not a linguist and this is also slightly oldfashioned language... but the meaning of it is something like this

"Bottenhavet (the Bothnian Sea), Bottniska viken (the Gulf of Bothnia), older versions of the name are Botn or Botnen. From old Swedish word botn, which has several meanings but the one relevant here is ’gulf’ or ’bay’."

Then the text is comparing with an Icelandic word, and in the end it says that the names Norrbotten, Västerbotten and Österbotten are derived from Bottenhavet/Bottniska viken.

I've corrected the beginning of the article section accordingly. However, the whole section about the name contains various unsourced statments saying completely different things. There might be better sources than this etymological dictionary from 1922, but since this is the only sourced information we have probably the rest of the paragraph should just be removed. I'll put "source needed"-tags on it for now. --83.189.149.109 (talk) 16:49, 19 August 2011 (UTC)