In honor of St. Urho's Day, I thought I would enlighten some people about the Finnish people.  Most of this stuff has been passed down to me by my father, aunt, and grandma, so if it's a little shady, it's there fault.

1.  There are way too many vowels in Finnish Names. That's how you can always tell if it's a Finnish name.  Kornonen, Laskinen, Ojala, Heinoenen, Vuorninen.  See what I mean?  My real last name (spoiler alert) is Leiviska.  They took one look at it when I started radio and said, yeah that's not gonna work.

2.  Toivo isn't just some guy from jokes. There was a guy named Toivo that was my parents neighbor.  There were also a few Einos in there too.

3.  There's a reason there isn't a lot of Finnish themed restaurants. There's Italian restaurants, Mexican Restaurants, Chinese Restaurants, Indian Restaurants, etc.  Finnish food isn't all that appealing to most people.  Just try Kalla Moijka-  Translation:  Fish head soup.

4.  Swearing in Finnish is really hard. Can't even repeat the things my father swore at me.  They don't even make sense.  All I can say is Aista Nappa.  (Smell my belly button.)

5.  Weirdly enough, Finnish people tan really well. Never met a full blood Finn who wasn't really tan in the summer.  Why?  I don't know.  I know a lot of them fish a lot in the summer?  I rarely burn, and when I was little I was dark brown skinned with blonde hair.  Years later I found a picture of my grandpa and I asked who the dark skin kid was in the picture.  It was my grandpa.  I looked the same 60 years later.

 

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