When Gustaf Jonass. Cajanus was born about 1780, in Kokkola, Vaasa, Finland, his father, Jonas Gustafsson Cajanas, was 65 and his mother, Hedvig Chydenia, was 38.
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Russian invasion of Sweden supported by Napoleon.
Sweden ceded Finland to Russia. Finland became Grand Duchy of Russia. State Council of Finns appointed. Finland enjoys limited autonomy.
Helsinki becomes capital.
English, German, French, Dutch, Polish, Lithuanian, Sorbian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic); Czech (Jonáš); Slovak (mainly Jonáš, also Jónáš, Jónás); Hungarian (Jónás): from a personal name, which is a variant of the Biblical name Jonah, Hebrew Yonah, meaning ‘dove’ in Hebrew. In the book of the Bible which bears his name, Jonah was appointed by God to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh, but tried to flee instead to Tarshish. On the voyage to Tarshish, a great storm arose and Jonah was thrown overboard by his shipmates to appease God's wrath, swallowed by a great fish, and delivered by it on the shores of Nineveh. This story exercised a powerful hold on the popular imagination in medieval Europe, and the personal name was a relatively common choice. The Hebrew name and its reflexes in other languages (for example Yiddish Yoyne) have been popular Jewish personal names for generations. In North America, this surname is also an altered form of the Polish variant Jonasz. Compare Yonas .
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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