Tuntematonta

Tuntematonta is a Finnish adjective meaning unknown or unidentified. It is used to describe a person or object whose identity or nature is not known, and appears in everyday language in phrases such as tuntematonta henkilöä (unknown person) or tuntematonta esinettä (unknown object). The form tuntematonta is the partitive singular of tuntematon, and it is used with verbs and nouns that require the partitive case.

The word is formed from the verb tuntea, “to know,” with a negating or non-assertive sense that yields “not known.” As such, tuntematon can function both attributively (tuntematon mies, an unknown man) and predicatively (Aika on tuntematon, time is unknown). In Finnish, tuntematonta and related inflected forms appear depending on grammatical case and number.

One of the best-known uses is in the title of Väinö Linna’s novel Tuntematon sotilas (1954), translated as The Unknown Soldier. The book is a classic of Finnish literature and portrays Finnish soldiers during World War II. It has been adapted for the screen twice, most famously as a 1955 film directed by Edvin Laine and again in 2017, directed by Aku Louhimies, bringing the story to new generations. The term tuntematonta also features in broader discourse as a symbol for unidentified people, objects, or facts, and appears in headlines when the subject’s identity is not yet known.

See also: The Unknown Soldier, Väinö Linna, Finnish literature.