titteliä

Titteliä is the partitive singular form of the Finnish noun titteli, which means title or designation. Titteli can refer to a person’s official position or rank (for example a job title such as professori) as well as the title of a work such as a book or film. In Finnish, titteli declines as titteli (nominative), tittelin (genitive), and titteliä (partitive).

The partitive form titteliä is used in contexts where the object is indefinite, part of a larger quantity, or governed by certain verbs that require the partitive. It commonly appears after numerals or other quantifiers, for example in sentences counting titles: Kolme titteliä on lueteltu tässä. It can also occur in phrases where the referent is not presented as a complete, definite item, or when the sentence is structured to take the partitive object.

Etymologically, titteli is borrowed from Swedish titel or German Titel and has been in Finnish for several centuries. The term encompasses two broad senses in contemporary usage: an official designation of a person’s role or status, and the title of a work. Distinctions exist between titteli and nimike (designation) or virkanimike (job title), though they overlap in everyday speech. In formal writing, personal titles used with names are typically capitalized according to style guides, while the general word titteli remains a common noun.

See also: nimike, virkanimike, titeliin liittyvät termit.