How does Finnish capitalise titles?

Finnish uses sentence case for titles: capitalise only the first word and any proper nouns. There is no English-style headline case where most words start with a capital. So a Finnish book title looks like an ordinary sentence.

Why do I have to list proper nouns myself?

A tool cannot reliably tell whether a word like 'suomi' means the country Finland (capitalised) or the language finnish (lowercase) from spelling alone. Listing your proper nouns guarantees names such as Helsinki and Kalevala stay capitalised while ordinary words are lowercased.

Does it handle Finnish letters correctly?

Yes. Capitalisation and lowercasing use Finnish locale rules, so the letters a-umlaut and o-umlaut are handled correctly when they appear at the start of a word.

Can I process multiple titles at once?

Yes. Each line is treated as its own title, so the first word of every line is capitalised independently. This is handy for formatting a list of headings or chapter titles together.

Is anything sent to a server?

No. All text processing happens locally in your browser, so your titles and proper-noun list never leave your device. It is safe for unpublished drafts.

Finnish Title Case — Gera Tools

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This tool formats Finnish titles and headings using Finnish capitalisation rules. Unlike English, Finnish does not capitalise most words in a title — it uses ordinary sentence case.

How it works

The rule Finnish shares with Swedish is simple: capitalise the first word of the title and any proper nouns, and leave everything else lowercase. The tool applies it in three steps. First it lowercases the whole title so stray all-caps input is normalised. Then it capitalises the first letter of the first word. Finally, for each word that matches your proper-noun list (compared case-insensitively after stripping punctuation), it capitalises the first letter.

Because spelling alone cannot distinguish a proper noun (Suomi, the country) from a common noun (suomi, the language), you supply the proper nouns to keep capitalised. Everything not on that list stays lowercase.

Example

For the title SUOMEN KIELEN HISTORIA HELSINGISSÄ with Helsinki in your proper-noun list, the output is Suomen kielen historia helsingissä — note that the inflected place name only matches if you list that exact form. Add the form you actually use to your list when a name is inflected.

Tips and notes

List every form of a name you expect, including inflected forms, since Finnish declines proper nouns heavily. Keep the first-word rule in mind: even a word that would normally be lowercase is capitalised when it opens the title.