Finningia is an old

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

name for

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

, along with ''Fennia'', ''Finnia'' and most often used ''Finlandia''. The name first appears in the work of

Olaus Magnus Olaus Magnus (October 1490 – 1 August 1557) was a Swedish writer, cartographer, and Catholic ecclesiastic. Biography Olaus Magnus (a Latin translation of his birth name Olof Månsson) was born in Linköping in October 1490. Like his elder ...

from 1539, who placed ''Finningia olim regnum'' on the Scandinavian map to indicate the unhistorical past kingdom of Finland. The name presumably is a misconception of

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...

's ''

Aeningia Aeningia is an island mentioned in '' the Natural History'' by Pliny the Elder, written in the 1st century CE. According to Pliny, Aeningia was inhabited by Sarmatians (Sarmati), Veneti (Venedi), Sciri and Hirri, bordering Vistula. Aeningia was p ...

'' that probably did not mean Finland but the area of the present-day

Baltic States The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, ...

. Aeningia seems to have first been confused with Finland by

Jacob Ziegler The humanist and theologian Jacob Ziegler (c. 1470/71 — August 1549) of Landau in Bavaria, was an itinerant scholar of geography and cartographer, who lived a wandering life in Europe. He studied at the University of Ingolstadt, then spent some ...

in 1532. Both Finlandia and Einingia are placed next to each other in the present-day southwestern Finland.

References

{{Finland-hist-stub Baltic Sea Geographic history of Finland Latin words and phrases