Requests for Finnish etymologies

I still take passes at cleaning up Finnish etymologies every now and then; having them tagged helps to keep track of what's done and what's not.

I usually create Proto-Finnic pages if I feel confident enough that the term comes from Proto-Finnic. That means that it has to have attestations in at least the North and South Finnic groups, preferably the less standardised varieties. Finnish + Võro + Veps is an excellent distribution, Votic is also very good. Finnish + Karelian + Veps is probably too dubious, as is North Finnic + Estonian, because Estonian is known to have borrowed a fair number of terms from Finnish.

If I'm not confident in reconstructing a term, I put a request there instead and list the cognates I did find.

A good use of caution. Words found in Finnish + Karelian + Veps alone would often include recent Russian loans, similarly Finnish + Karelian + Estonian would rake in lots of Swedish and even some Low German loans.

"I usually create Proto-Finnic pages if I feel confident enough that the term comes from Proto-Finnic." Isn't that called "guessing" by another name?

The caution I described here is supposed to avoid guessing, and make sure that there is enough evidence for the reconstruction. If all Finnic languages agree on a form, there's no room left for guesswork.