Bus stop names and the Swedish language – two case-studies of linguistic landscapes in the Helsinki Region

This paper deals with a category of names not previously discussed within onomastics: the names of bus stops. As the stops are most often named after streets, areas etc., their use as an identifier for a bus stop is only a secondary function of these names. In a multilingual setting, these names can be given and used in more than one language in parallel, as is the case in the Helsinki Region where the official names of bus stops are given in both Finnish and Swedish. Regarding minority languages, the names have both an informative and a symbolic function when used in linguistic landscapes.

The main aim of this paper is to discuss how the use of bilingual names for bus stops can affect the overall visibility of the de facto minority language, Swedish, in both physical and virtual linguistic landscapes. This question is discussed through two case-studies.

In the first case-study, I focus on the linguistic landscapes around three bus stops in the monolingual municipality of Tuusula. As practically no Swedish is used in the linguistic landscapes (apart from the village that is the location of a Swedish-language school), the introduction of bilingual names for bus stops can be considered to positively affect the visibility of Swedish and make bilingualism more explicit.

In the second case-study, I comment on the virtual linguistic landscape of the route planner website of the Helsinki Regional Transport, HSL. As the service is built around separate versions for the two languages, no bilingualism is evident. Instead, two monolingual virtual landscapes with only Finnish or Swedish names are created, with Finnish names even appearing in some parts of the Swedish language version. Thus, the focus on digital information might diminish the visibility of the bilingual namescape.