thumb|The word as the name of God in a Finnish Lutheran church in Russia ( – )
(), () or (Mari) means in the Finnic languages and those of the Volga Finns (Mari, Erzya and Moksha languages), both the Christian God and any other deity of any religion. The word is thought to have been the name of a sky god of the ancient Finnic-speaking peoples. Jumala as a god of the sky is associated with the related Estonian , Mari and is thought to stem from an ancient tradition of the Finno-Ugric peoples.
Etymology
The Finnic and Mari terms for are usually considered to derive from a common Finno-Permic root . Related terms have been proposed to be found also in the Mordvinic languages: ёндол , interpretable as an old compound meaning (cf. тол ). A single 17th-century source on Mordvinic moreover mentions Jumishipas as the name of a pre-Christian deity. The exact meaning of this however remains unclear (cf. ши , пас ).
There are different theories concerning the earlier origin of the word. An Indo-Iranian origin for the name has been proposed, comparing e.g. Sanskrit , accepted in some sources but disputed in others due to the inexact meaning. A different possible origin is Baltic languages (cf. Jumis – Latvian god of the evergreen Otherworld, and his sister/wife Jumala).
This name replaced the original Finno-Ugric word for (*ilma), which is preserved in the Sámi and Permic languages but whose meaning was shifted to in Finnic. The older sense remains in the Finnish divine name Ilmarinen.
No certain equivalents are found in the Ugric languages, though a minority view proposes a connection with words meaning 'good', such as Hungarian , Northern Mansi . The source of these words has been reconstructed as rather than .</blockquote>
Later on, the sky itself was called and the sky-god Ukko Ylijumala, literally Grandfather or Old Man Overgod. However, when Christianity came to dominate Finnish religious life in the Middle Ages and the old gods were ousted or consolidated away from the pantheon, Jumala became the Finnish name for the Christian God.
Jómali<span class="anchor" id="Jómali"></span>
Two Old Norse texts mention a god called , worshipped in Bjarmaland: Óláfs saga helga chapter 133 and Bósa saga chapters 8-10. The attestation in is probably borrowed from the earlier . The name of this god is generally assumed to be a loanword from a Finnic language.
See also
- Birch bark letter no. 292 ( used twice in the text)
- Ukko
- Svarga, the abode of Indra, the thunder deity.
References
Sources
- Nationalencyklopedin