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I was reading a story last week that had the words for index finger and ring finger in it, and it made me wonder if I actually knew the names of all of the fingers in Icelandic. So I looked into it, and this is what I found out. I even decided to throw in the foot and toes since it seemed natural 🙂
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The most common names for the five fingers are as follows:
þumall – thumb
vísi·fingur – index finger
langatöng – middle finger
baug·fingur – ring finger
litli·fingur – little finger
There are a couple of variations I found, like sleiki·fingur (index) and hring·fingur (ring). Another word for finger is putti, which shows up with the expression
fara á puttanum – hitchhike
There was another one for hitchhiking involving the thumb – ferðast á þumalfingrinum – I don’t know which of either is more common. Another interesting “thumb” related word is þumlungur – inch.
But there’s more to the hand than fingers, so to round out the vocabulary list I’ll add:
handarbak – back of the hand
lófi – palm of the hand
úln·liður – wrist
nögl – fingernail
And yes, there is even a page on the Icelandic Wikipedia all about the Fingur 🙂
The foot and toes don’t seem quite as interesting, other than stóratá (big toe) and lítlatá (little toe), they seem to just be numbered. There is also þumaltá for the big toe (thumb toe :))
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And a few foot related words:
hæll – heel
ökkli – ankle
rist – instep
Be sure to check out the Wikipedia page for Tá as well!