>Finally, Estonian for "strawberry pie" (maasikapirukas) is Finnish for "earth-swine devilish" so perhaps there's something to that thing about earth, after all.
The pirukas part might come from baltic - pyragas and/or slavic - pirog.
The pirukas part might come from baltic - pyragas and/or slavic - pirog.
In fact, it seems that Fenno-Ugric words for strawberry also refer to earth, just like Germanic. Finnish "mansikka" and Estonian "maasika" both start like "maa, manner, mansi, mantu". So it appears the meaning has been translated long, long ago, it's not borrowed as a word that sounds the same.
(For those who don't know, Fenno-Ugric languages like Finnish, Estonian or Hungarian are of a completely different origin than Indo-European languages which include Germanic, Romanic and Slavic languages. English and Russian are close relatives and Hindi is their cousin, while Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are a strange family to them. And then there is the European orphan, Basque language.)