Written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost and published on the 18th of August 2026. This publication is unrelated to and separate from any and all of my other publications, including from other recently published articles and blog posts pertaining to related topics, and to a recently published article on Scribd & Slideshare with other new etymological links not discussed here. Some, but not all of the etymological similarities discussed in this blog post, I have discussed elsewhere, but not all of them, and the information and content of this article is unique. This article/blog post was published in the UK and no AI was used, it contains 1202 words. Note across a lot of other publications I have extensively discussed a lot of other words links connected to these languages.
Elsewhere I have published about how Finnic and Sámic words for "boat" bare similarities to words for "boat", "canoe", "stream" in many indigenous South American languages, as well as to Japanese fune - "boat" for example; along with publishing about a large number of other words similarities between the aforementioned and other languages. In this blog post I want to focus specifically on how these words for "boat", "canoe", "stream"/"flow" might also connect to the Mapuche/Mapudungun words yene and yenü, both meaning "whale".
First of all, we can connect this to the idea of how legends of deities connected to the ocean, e.g. Väinämöinen in Finnish tradition, are said to travel across the sea, like Viracocha in Andean traditions and the Apkallu in Sumerian traditions, which also connects for example I think to the trølla of Faroese tradition, the Fin-men of Shetland tradition and to much more, and in a less specific way to for example the idea of King Arthur in Avalon, and well, in a more general way, widely to the concept that souls go "westward" into the afterlife, although this is not necessarily the same concept. In Tolkien's mythology for example, Valinor is an "other" realm, and an afterlife realm for Elves, but it is not where human spirits travel to for their afterlife.
The general idea across many mythologies seems to be of gods and magical beings using the sea as a passage to and from their own realms, their own realms perhaps connecting to the ideas of "floating islands","undying lands" and flotoyggjar as they are known in Faroese as I have discussed in many other publications.
Personally I think that if vene shares a root with yene and yenü then the original meaning was not "boat" but something more in reference to the movement of water and of the movement of a soul or being on or through water. Other possible links demonstrate this, for example with Mapuche wampo - "canoe", Quechua wamp'u - "boat,raft"and wamp'uy or wanp'uy - "for a human to move on a through water, e.g. swimming;Kawesqar (a Patagonian language): yemase - "boat"(1), Selknam (another Patagonian language) yèni - "canoe" (2), Tehuelche (another Patagonian language) 'yeney - "boat" (3), Mashco Piro wenɨ - "river, stream" (4), Yagua wapuru - "boat" (5), Pacahuara 'ʔani - "river, stream, brook" (6), Yavitero weni -"river, stream, brook" (7), Waurá wene - "river, stream, brook" (8). It seems that this root, if indeed it is one, means specifically a "stream" in Arawakan, and there are also many other similarities between Arawakan and Quechuan, and Arawakan and Uralic.
There are also other examples from South America, but outside of the Americas in general we can see a similarity with Proto-Polynesian *waŋka - "canoe", and thus with Rapa Nui vaka, and Maori waka. There are examples from North American Indigenous languages which I have discussed elsewhere, including in the article reached via the following link: https://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/gaelicdialects.htm
There are also possible examples elsewhere, not including Japanese fune and of course the Uralic words, including Finnish vene, Kven venet, Võro veneq, North Estonian vene, and forms in the Sámi languages, such as Northern Sámi fanas, Lule Sámi vanás, Inari Sámi voonâs etc; and, in the Mordvinic Uralic languages are Moksha венеж, venež and Erzya венч, venč, also referring to types of boat.
In Mapuche spirituality, the Trempulcahue or four divine spirit beings, taking the form of four whales. These beings take the souls of the dead to the island of Ngül Chenmaywela, and when souls reached this island, they would then transform into spirits, and head to more mysterious lands to the west. Again we see here this idea that souls or spirit beings travel west across the sea to reach an otherworldly realm, and then afterlife in this case. It is interesting also that these four whale-like beings are also described as being four elderly women who transform into these beings at sunset to carry the souls. It is also curious that I have come across an account in Gaelic folklore of witches being able to transform into whales, specifically the legend describes two young women witches frolicking close to the shore, and then transforming into whales and heading out to sea.
I want to do a post about another root word meaning "boat" in the near future. I hope that this blog post was an interesting read, and I write it for all those I love, and for the Americas, I dedicate it to the ancestors and deities of the Mapuche people, and I write it in honour of the Trempulcahue and of the Scottish witches, with thanks given to all indigenous peoples and to their ancestors and gods. Below are references:
(1):Christos Clairis and José Pedro Viegas Barros. 2023. Qawasqar dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/313, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
(2): Elena L. Najlis. 2023. Selknam dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/311, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
(3):Martine Delahaye. 2023. Tehuelche dictionary.
In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.)
The Intercontinental Dictionary Series.
Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
(Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/310, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
(4): Mary Ritchie Key. 2023. Mashco Piro dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/264, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
(5):Esther Powlison and Paul S. Powlison. 2023. Yagua dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/260, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
(6): Mary Ritchie Key. 2023. Pacahuara dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/280, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
(7): Mary Ritchie Key. 2023. Yavitero dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/268, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
(8): Joan Richards. 2023. Waurá dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/267, Accessed on 2026-08-16.)
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