The (Re)Naming of the Finnish Representative Assembly 1809– 1919: State-Building, Representation and Sovereignty

This article examines the names and naming of Finnish parliamentary institutions in relation to European debates, focusing on the period from the Diet of Porvoo in 1809 to the Constitution Act of 1919. The article presents a history of the adoption of the current names of the Finnish parliament – valtiopäivät and eduskunta in Finnish, riksdagen in Swedish, as well as a number of failed proposals. It analyzes how and why the names of the Finnish representative assembly were created and established. The article examines naming as a political act. The name formation was influenced by Finland’s position as a grand duchy of the Russian Empire and the constitutional and language tradition of its former mother country Sweden. However, naming of the assemblies took place in relation to wider European debates and developments. Political actors used translation and naming innovatively to (re)define, (re)describe and (re)conceptualize Finland’s status and national representation. The aim was to raise Finland and its nascent representation among European constitutional states and their parliamentary institutions. The article shows, for example, that valtiopäivät , applied since 1847 to the estate meeting in Porvoo in 1809, preceded the adoption of valtio as the Finnish word for the state, forming a crucial step in defining the Grand Duchy of Finland as a state.


I. INTRODUCTION
In the long nineteenth century, parliaments emerged across Europe in countries with different historical and political traditions. Estate assemblies were reformed into bi-and unicameral parliaments. Names of national assemblies shared similarities internationally, across languages. Typically, the names highlighted the character of the represented entity (rik, lant, nation, staten), temporal aspects (dag, Tag), and activity (parler, represent[er]). Furthermore, names, such as the British Parliament and French Assemblée nationale, became common nouns for representative and deliberative assemblies. Names of reformed assemblies reflected national contexts, traditions and expectations, but also international trends, developments and conventions. In countries like France, assemblies were given new names to highlight the break with the past, whereas names such as the Dutch Staten-Generaal emphasized continuity of a long historical tradition (Aerts et al. 2015;Garrigues 2007).
This article studies European parliamentary nomenclature by focusing on nineteenthand early twentieth-century Finland, whose emerging parliamentary institutions and vocabulary were developed by actively following and applying European models, concepts and ideas. The Finnish case illustrates how European debates on parliaments and parliamentarism offered conceptual repertoires that actors used selectively and innovatively in national discussions (Pekonen 2014 This article examines naming as a political act (Palonen 2018). Naming is a process of identifying, but also comparing and classifying things. It is a way of structuring the world, partly dependent on pragmatic, linguistic and cultural aspects (Allan 2016;Bertills 2003;Rose-Redwood et al. 2018). Names and naming are based on conventions, but in the case of parliamentary institutions, for example, they require agreement and decision-making. In this article, I analyze how the names of Finnish representative assemblies were formed and why certain names were established.
Although I highlight key moments and acts of naming, I also understand that the names of political institutions reflect and shape cultural practices, values and expectations. Thus, I analyze names and naming to better understand Finnish parliamentary life and political culture.
The article presents a history of the adoption of the current names of the Finnish representative assembly -valtiopäivät and eduskunta in Finnish, and riksdagen in Swedish. 2 I analyze the names and naming from the Diet of Porvoo in 1809 until the promulgation of the first Constitution Act of independent Finland in 1919. The formation of the names was influenced by Finland's position as a grand duchy of the Russian Empire and the constitutional and language tradition of its former mother country Sweden. However, naming of the assemblies took place in relation to wider European debates and developments. Political actors used translation and naming to (re)define, (re)describe and (re)conceptualize Finland's status and national 1 I would like to thank the reviewers of this article, whose insightful comments helped me to clarify my argument.

2
The names in Finnish and Swedish are uncapitalized, but the practice varied in the sources of this study . Pekonen Redescriptions: Political Thought,Conceptual History and Feminist Theory DOI: 10.33134/rds.348 representation. The aim was to raise Finland and its nascent representation among European constitutional states and their parliamentary institutions. I highlight spatial and temporal dimensions of politics. Political actors employed information on foreign experiences and made use of historical arguments, constructing notions of continuity and divides between the past and the present. To understand why certain names and common nouns for representative assemblies became customary in Finland, I also look into the histories of failed proposals and thus highlight conceptualizations as contested political acts.
Thus far, the naming of Finnish parliamentary institutions has been only fragmentarily studied. For example, in the first national conceptual history project, the names of representative assemblies were analyzed in relation to concepts such as 'state' and 'representation' (Pohjantammi 2003;Pulkkinen 2000;Pulkkinen 2003 Finnish language actors active in naming also spoke Swedish. Swedish was the language of politics, administration and public debate in Finland until the second half of the nineteenth century. The backwardness of Finnish political language was fought by systematically adopting and translating European concepts and vocabulary (Hyvärinen et al. 2003). Actualizing and elaborating Swedish traditions appeared not only in the Swedish modes of naming, but also in how Finnish was in the acts and processes of naming refined as a political language.  (Jussila 1969;Jussila 1987). After Porvoo, the tsar did not convene the Diet until 1863.
Russian authorities referred to the estate meeting in Porvoo in 1809 with the French word diète (la diète generale, la diète de la Finlande, les états de Finlande en une diète générale) and with the Russian seim (Halila 1962, 498). Diète derives from the Latin diēs (day), originally referring to the time period, that is, the day(s) of the assembly (Ihalainen, Ilie & Palonen 2016, 9). The official Swedish-language name used in Finland was Landtdag. The name illustrates how in the Germanic language tradition, the temporal aspect is often combined with a territorial or constitutional dimension, for example in the German names Landtag (Land referring to a federated state) and Reichstag (Reich referring to a realm, kingdom or empire). Similarly, Landtdag was composed of the words land(t)- ([provincial] state, country or territory) and -dag (day).
Landtdag was taken from Sweden. The provincial meetings of Sweden mostly held in the seventeenth century, often in connection with the national Riksdag, were called lantdagar, landtdagar or landdagar (Svenska Akademiens ordbok). Newspapers published in Sweden and Finland used landtdag to refer to the assemblies of German, Prussian and Austrian states and crown lands, as a substitute for the German word Herredagar were meetings of notable men, assembled by the king to discuss matters of war and taxes in the fifteenth and especially in the sixteenth century. After creating a more permanent representation for the provinces of Sweden, the assemblies were officially called riksdagar (Pohjantammi 2003, 371;Westrin 1909, 551-552). The Finnish Herran(-)päivät, Herran Päevä, Herran Päivä and Herrain-päivät were used to refer to the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates at least from the seventeenth century onwards, for example in the translation of the Riksdag Act of 1723 (Cuning:sen Maij:tin 1732; also 1600-luvun asetustekstejä). In the press, herra(i)n päiwät was used to refer not only to Swedish, but also to a variety of European and American representative assemblies from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries.
Although herrainpäivät was used for both the Swedish Riksdag and the Porvoo Diet, Finland's transition from the Swedish realm to a grand duchy of the Russian Empire was underlined in legal documents by calling the Finnish estates maan säädyt (estates of the provincial state), whereas during the Swedish period inhabitants of Finland had been representatives of the waldakunnan säädyt (estates of the realm) (Keisari ja Suuriruhtinas Aleksanteri I:n julistus 1809).  (Pulkkinen 2003, 218, 220, 232). Similarly, Martti Rapola (1960, 65) has argued that Paavo Tikkanen used valtio for the first time as a substitute for the Swedish stat in 1847.
However, the success of valtio was preceded and enabled by the breakthrough of valtiopäivät. Valtiopäivät belongs to the Finnish political vocabulary that was coined around the European revolutions of 1848 as a reaction to the parliamentary and constitutional debates in Europe. It is important to note that the word valtiopäivät was established during a period when valtio i) was not used individually but as a part of compounds (when referring to stat vocabulary), and ii) was still taking shape and largely lacked the meaning of the modern concept of state. Furthermore, to understand the separate early microhistories of the two words, iii) they lacked mutual linkage -valtiopäivät were not originally organized in valtio.
The European revolutions of 1848 reached Finland through the press. Despite Finland's peripheral location on the northeastern edge of Europe, the events of 1848 resonated and caused excitement among the political elite (Paasivirta 1978, 139-150 The national spirit colored the pages of the press. Suometar wrote that the idea of nationality (kansallisuus) and its previously unknown forces had become dominating.
Language was the foundation of nationality, and each nation and language had the right to live, develop and prosper. The newspaper recognized that the Finnish nationalist Fennomania (Suomikiihko, Finland fervor) was part of this international movement and that its equivalents could be found in Teutonism, Magyarism and Pan-Slavism (Rohwessor Palmblad 1848). As another sign of the spread of the revolutionary ideas, parliamentary style of debating became a means to challenge old ideals, authority and practices of politics in the University of Helsinki's student associations and their mini-parliaments (Klinge 1967, 178-179). The song that became the Finnish national anthem was first presented in public in a students' spring celebration in Helsinki, May 13, 1848.
Paavo Tikkanen coined valtiopäivät in 1847 (Hakulinen 1979, 456). His text in the publication Lukemisia Suomen Kansan Hyödyksi (Reading for the Benefit of the Finnish People), edited by Tikkanen, has been highlighted as the first occurrence of valtio.
However, valtio does not appear in the text individually, but as a part of compounds.
The overwhelmingly most popular of the compounds is valtiopäivät (used 12 times), whereas valtio is used to replace Swedish stat in only a few translated compounds, which are legal and administrative in character: waltio-käytäntö (stats-wärk), In 1848, Tikkanen used valtiopäivät to refer to European representative assemblies that were fighting for power against monarchy. His Suometar used valtiopäivät to highlight the assemblies as the centers for legitimate political power and influence.

Waltio-neuwosto (Statsrådet), waltioneuwos (statsråd) and Minister-Waltiosihtieri
The power sprung from the people through elected representatives -the purpose of valtiopäivät was to realize the needs and wishes of the people. In Suometar, valtiopäivät were, for example, the first elected Reichstag of the Austrian Empire and the Hungarian parliament (for example, Ulkomaalta 1848d).
Valtiopäivät and valtio are derivatives of the Finnish word valta (power), which has existed in the Finnish language at least from the sixteenth century. Valta is of the same old Germanic origin as German Gewalt and Swedish våld and välde (Hyvärinen 2003, 64). Valta became popular in the press in 1820, when Finnish language scholar

IV.1. THE FINAL BREAKTHROUGH OF VALTIOPÄIVÄT
Emperor Alexander II convened the estates in 1863 after a more than 50-year hiatus.  (Engman 2017, 37-38). and administrative sphere. The words raised Russian criticism only later, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One explanation is that stat vocabulary was considered less problematic compared to rik as it carried the meaning of the old 'financial state' (finanssivaltio), which was an administrative machinery, especially related to taxation (Jussila 1987).
Another reason was the initial ambiguity of valtiopäivät. It did not make the distinction between lantdag and riksdag but was used for a variety of assemblies in different kinds of polities. If we look at the conceptual repertoire that the Finnish nationalist protagonists had at their disposal, the deliberate use of valtiopäivät becomes even more obvious. Riksdag and Reichstag were translated into Finnish as riikinpäivä and valtakunnanpäivät, but the words never became popular and they were not used in reference to the Finnish assemblies (for example, Ludwig Kossuth 1849; Senaattori Mechelinin 1907). Lan(d)tdag and Landtag had their translations as well. They were translated rather faithfully as maapäivät or maakuntapäivät, but, again, the words were only used to refer to foreign assemblies and old provincial Swedish lan(d) tdags (for example, Itävallasta 1848; Ulkomaalta 1865b). Finnish actors considered maakuntapäivät inappropriate for the Finnish assembly as it would have undermined the importance of the significant and essentially national institution (for example, Uusi ukaasi 1909). Valtiopäivät, in contrast, highlighted the Diet as the center for national political power and a national symbol, in connection with its foreign counterparts. Eduskunta was coined from several root words. The vocabulary of edus-and edes-(cf. Swedish före and German ver-) was used to signify presenting and responsibility in front of others. Edusmies (representative) was used from the beginning of the seventeenth century, when discussing the administrative organization of the church. In the early eighteenth century, it was used when referring to the estate representatives of the Swedish Riksdag (Pohjantammi 2003, 366-368, 372, 377). Early nineteenth-century newspapers used edusmies to refer to an elected or appointed person who represented a larger entity (for example, Tietoja 1822). Suometar used the term in 1848 to refer to elected representatives of the people. Suometar also used the term kansan edusmies.
It was a precedent of the later popular term kansanedustaja (representative of the people) Saksanmaalta 1848). Representation of the people (kansan edustus) became a discussion topic in the press in the 1860s due to the Diets, the Swedish representation reform of 1865-1866 and the Diet Act.
The centrality of the representative aspect becomes evident in the plurality of edus-  Because of the strong emphasis on representation and limited powers of the Finnish assembly, the legislative function was given little attention in the naming.
Translations of a legislative assembly (for example, lakiasäätävä laitos, lakiasäätävä kokous, lakiasäätävän kunnan kokous, lakialaativa laitos) were rarely applied to the Finnish assemblies. Instead, they remained common nouns for foreign assemblies and translated names for the French assemblies (Assemblée nationale legislative, Corps législatif) and the US state legislatures (Ulkomaalta 1849c; Ulkomaalta 1865a).
The old words for estate meetings, herrainpäivät and herredagar became rhetorical tools to stress the urgency of democratic reform and conflict between the elite and the masses. In the revolutionary context of 1848, they were used to contrast old undemocratic and unreformed estate assemblies with modern parliaments.

V.2. LAN(D)TDAG: UNICAMERAL PARLIAMENT WITH LIMITED POWERS
Despite the transition to the unicameral parliament in 1906, the formal powers of the grand duchy's assembly remained limited. New legislation required promulgation of the emperor, there was no parliamentary government and the emperor had the right to dissolve the parliament, which he often did. The Parliamentary Reform maintained Landtdag as the official Swedish language name. In the reform committee, Thiodolf Rein argued that the name Landtdag should not be changed, since the assembly and its name had grown to be part of the Finnish tradition. Committee chair and professor of law Robert Hermanson noted that changes in the constitution or organization of the assembly was neither a problem for maintaining the old name, since for example the Prussian assembly had always been called Landtdag (Eduskuntakomitea 1906).
To correct a common misinterpretation in literature, it is worth noting that Lantdag

VI. REPLACING LAN(D)TDAG WITH RIKSDAG IN 1917-1919
Assemblies representing the Swedish realm began to be called Riksdagar in the seventeenth century (Pohjantammi 2003, 371-372). Riksdag was also used in Finland when referring to the Swedish four-estate assembly (Utdrag 1771). Estate members used Riksdag and riksdagsman also in the Porvoo Diet (Landtdag) in 1809, whereas the estates were more cautious in their official documents (Castrén 1892, 5). The linguistic ambiguity of the transitional phase reflected the fact that some estate representatives of the Porvoo Diet also participated in the Swedish Riksdag of the same year (Halila 1962, 541-542;Nummela 1961, 343-353

VII. EPILOGUE: THE MISSING VOCABULARY OF 'PARLIAMENT'
Interestingly, the Finnish and Swedish vocabularies have rarely applied nouns stemming from 'parliament' to Finland's own representative assemblies, although they early appeared in the descriptions of politics in foreign countries and although the adjective 'parliamentary' later became popular as an attribute of varying modes of political action.
Terms related to parliament, such as parlement, parlament, Parlamente, parlamento and so forth, are internationally common nouns for representative assemblies. They are very seldom proper names (Ihalainen et al. 2016, 9). In contrast to the Finnish vocabulary of representation, the term 'parliament' refers to a space of speech. In the twelfth century, meetings and assemblies were called parlamentum or parliamentum (Kluxen 1983, 17). In England, the word was used in 1236 (Richardson & Sayles 1967, 747-750). In Swedish, terms parlement, perlament and perlement appeared at least as early as in the early sixteenth century (Svenska Akademiens ordbok). The press started calling the French chambers parlamentti in the beginning of the 1880s. Until then, newspapers referred to 'the French assembly ' (församling, kokous) or 'chambers' (kamrarne, kamarit). The Fennoman press was reluctant to label the French assembly as a parliament because of its indecent and tumultuous tradition and practices. For example, Uusi Suometar (Ulkomaalta 1880) argued that 'In France, the institution of the parliament leads into radicalism […] Britain is the real country of the parliament, its parliament is deeply rooted in the people and a product of a long and prestigious history'.
Reformists of 1905-1906 or 1917-1919 did not discuss the possibility of naming the Finnish assembly parlamentti or parlament. The terms were not included in the official parliamentary vocabulary. Parliaments remained something foreign to Finnish political practice. They remained foreign standards and points of comparison (Ensimmäiset valtiopäivät 1917, 301;Toiset valtiopäivät 1917: I, 62, 256, 272, 362, 697;Valtiopäivät 1919a, 290;Valtiopäivät 1919b, 5;Ylimääräiset valtiopäivät 1918, 99 This left a mark on the Finnish vocabulary, and resulted especially in the strong emphasis on representation in the name Eduskunta. The focus on representation has traditionally characterized Finnish parliamentary life. The Finnish parliament has been examined in public debate and research primarily as a representative assembly, while paying much less attention to its deliberative character or modes of proceeding (Pekonen 2014).
The late formation of the Finnish parliamentary vocabulary was both a challenge and an asset for Finnish nationalists. Finnish lacked words to convey all meanings of a civilized language (for example, Suomen kielen 1863) and the incoherent and innovative use of words caused concerns that the language would never be ready if new words were constantly coined (Kirjallisuutta 1863). This, however, gave the Finnish actors leeway compared to Swedish. Although the situation forced to innovate and invent in Finnish, the Swedish names could be, and had to be, grounded on an already existing tradition and practice. The names Landtdag and Riksdag followed and adapted to changes in Finland's political and constitutional status.