Chris is friends with a few people on Duo Lingo and I got curious and decided to join Duo Lingo to figure out who else was on his friend list and a name of "Helmi Ikävalko" appeared in his list and when I searched "Helmi name" on the Brave search engine, it shows in the results that Helmi is in fact a Estonian and Finnish name.
Because there's fuck-all else going on with Flutter these days, I was doing some poking around with different combinations and translations of the Helmi Ikävalko name. Translations were via Google Translate, so take them for what that's worth. Additionally, much of this is going to sound retardedly obvious to Finns. It's also being posted here for reference, not because of any earth-shattering discoveries.
'Helmi' translates to 'pearl'; Ikävalko to 'age white'. Something about that didn't feel right, so I dug into the name a bit further. 'Helmi' is a diminutive form of 'Vilhelmiina' (may also be spelled as 'Vilhelmina' if the Swedish form is used), so the possibility is there of her actually being named Vilhelmiina Ikävalko.
The surname Ikävalko appears to be mostly found in Karelia, along the South-Eastern border with Russia, and is not very common. Speculation was that she was from or lived in South Ostrobothnia, which is more or less on the opposite side of the country. People do move between regions, so that remains a valid possibility - however, she may have relatives in the East as a result if that is correct.
Finnish is a really interesting language, particularly the verb and noun structure. It's easy to see why it has a high bar to learning it later in life, but there's a great deal of logic and progression behind how words and sentences are formed. As an example, if the last name 'Ikävalko' was a verb, the -ko (or -kö) suffix would indicate that a question was being asked, and other suffixes it may be compounded with determine the subject, object, and actions. In a sense, it's sort of like German, but, loan words aside, the two are clearly not related.
This led to some playing around with the structure of the surname, removing letters from the end to see how the translation changed. It's likely not relevant, but native Finnish speakers would need to verify that.
- Ikävalko - age white
- Ikävalk - age group
- Ikäval - age selection
- Ikäva - I'm sorry
- Ikäv - boring
- Ikä - age
- Ik - I
The reason for prodding at the name structure: her name was feeling like it may have been a pseudonym, and I wanted to see if anything interesting may come from a translation and modification. I'm not totally convinced that it is a pseudonym, particularly given that others in Finland share the surname. However, seeing 'I'm sorry' and 'boring' crop up was at least slightly interesting, given how those elements are sometimes referenced in usernames or online bios.
There's also a Helmi Ikävalko who appeared in a short film made in 1956,
Taikapeili (Magic Mirror). The movie may or may not hold some significance for Flutter, and she may have adopted the actress' name as a pseudonym. Again, though, this is total speculation.
