Sami

How to spell sami

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sami

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sami mean?

1. nounA member of the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, Finland, and northwestern Russia.
2. nounThe group of Finno-Ugric languages spoken by this people.

Sami in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced the reindeer-herding traditions of the sami.

• The broadcaster offers news bulletins in both Norwegian and sami.

• Her grandmother was sami, born in the far north of Norway.

• She is learning sami to read the old folk songs in their original words.

Where does sami come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is the name the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula use for themselves, written in their own languages as Sámi or Saami. It long replaced the older outsider term Lapp, which many now consider derogatory. The name's deeper origin is genuinely debated: many linguists link it to the same ancient root that gave Finnish 'Suomi' (the native name for Finland), possibly traced back to a Baltic word meaning 'land' or 'earth'. English borrowed the form Sami only in the twentieth century as awareness of the people's preferred name spread, which is why the spelling stays close to the original rather than being anglicised. The single 'm' and the plain '-i' ending are the trap, since English speakers often expect a doubled letter or a '-y'.

How the word is built

• Sami (the people's own name for themselves)
• no affixes; an unanalysable proper-noun root