Finnish & Swedish Alphabet


Finland and Sweden use the same alphabet. The following 29 letters are used:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÅÄÖ

How do you pronounce the letters ÅÄÖ in Finnish and Swedish?
These vowels are pronounced in the same manner as the red letters in the examples:

Å
clock, door
Ä
hat
Ö
bird, the



Do they use any other letters?
No other letters are used in plain Finnish. The letter Å is not used in Finnish, but it may be used in surnames with a Swedish origin. In surnames with a German origin you can find the letter Ü, equal to Y.

In Swedish you can see the letters Á, À, É, È, Ó, Ò and Ü mainly in names.

How do they sort the letters in Finland?

Sort order

Comments

A (Á) (À) All letters of same weight.
B
CNot used in modern Finnish.
D
E (É) (È) All letters of same weight.
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O (Ó) (Ò)
P
QNot used in modern Finnish, rare in modern Swedish.
R
S
T
U
VWBoth letters of same weight. W is not used in modern Finnish or Swedish. W is used in Swedish names.
XNot used in modern Finnish.
Y (Ü)Both letters of same weight. Ü is only used in names in both Finnish and Swedish.
ZNot used in modern Finnish, rare in modern Swedish.
ÅIn Finnish only in names of Swedish origin.
Ä
Ö


Note! If a name in Finnish or Swedish is preceeded by a prefix (von, af, von der, etc.) it will always be sorted according to the main part of the name. Exceptions are de and de la, which belong to the main part of the names.


This is a FAQ file from the The Genealogical Society of Finland on Finnish genealogy.
Updated November 18, 1998.