Jiepmaluokta

Jiepmaluokta (Northern Sami) or Hjemmeluft (Norwegian) is a bay in the municipality of Alta in Norway. It is the main site for the rock carvings at Alta with about 3000 individual carvings (petroglyphs).

Hjemmeluft is an often used example for how the Norwegenization of the indigenous Sami language names in Northern Norway have often created meaningless names. In Sami language the name Jiepmaluokta is "bay of seals" while the Norwegian name Hjemmeluft is an adaption of the Sami name and is translated to "home air".

The ending -luft (air) comes from the accusative and genitive form of the Sámi noun luokta (bay) : "luovtta" which is pronounced "luofta". The Norwegian version's hjemme- (home) may indicate that at an earlier stage the toponym was Jiemmaluokta - the difference being that jiepma is rendered in genitive, making the name mean "seal's bay".

There is also another place in Finnmark County called Jiemmaluokta. In Norwegian, that place is called Saraby and lies in Kvalsund.

Coordinates: 69°57′00″N 23°12′00″E / 69.9500°N 23.2000°E / 69.9500; 23.2000

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, January 07, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.