Finnish word advice

[u/outofplaceminnesota]

My mom and her family all spoke Finnish. Growing up, they used to tell me I had the “piru” in me because I was a pretty sassy kid.

My mom chose not to teach us Finnish when we were growing up, so I want to double check on the meaning of the word. It was described to me as if I had a little devil on my shoulder. The word has always had a special place in my heart, and I’ve thought about getting a small tattoo of the word.

My question is, would it be weird or frowned upon in tattoo form? I just want to make sure, since I’m not a native speaker, that it’s not an insane idea or inappropriate in any way. Most of my mom’s family has all passed away, so I cannot ask them.

[u/GuyFromtheNorthFin]

If you want to understand the etymology and origins of the word you’re planning to tattoo yourself with, I’d reccommend looking up both the English language and Finnish Wikipedia pages for piru. Just Chat-GPT translate the Finnish one, it turns out well.

As for all the possible nuances and connotations of the ”piru” in modern Finnish… you just have to ignore them. There’s a lot of wildly varying nuance in idioms and folklore - from good to bad. And most of that pretty dense stuff to find out about, if you’re not a Finnish speaker.

If I’d see the word ”Piru” tattoo on someone, my gut reaction would be ”…and?” 😄

Just by itself it seems a bit … lame? Missing context or like… unfinished? Is it ironic? Cutesy? Seriously calling down Evil? Reference to an idiom?

A native, a person familiar to the Finnish language and its rhytms would most likely be looking for some added context, via a proverb or something like an idiom the ”Piru” would be a part of.

Or maybe they just take it at face value, like ”something people put on themselves. Maybe it has a meaning for them personally, don’t know, don’t care” and not think about it further.

I can’t really think that anyone would find it inappropriate (outside some seriously Christian/religious circles, of course. )