Shakespeare and Myths About Genius

[muriel_volestrangler]

41. FWIW, everyone agrees it's the Irish origin. It came from a real "Jimmy Finn"

who was "the other town drunkard" with Tom Blankenship.

https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Lamb_Roots.pdf

From an academic article (you need a free sign-in to read it): https://www.jstor.org/stable/461003

"Finn, a common enough name then and now, is also joyously and unmistakably Celtic and, as such, had connotations of the Irish in nineteenth century America: typically servants and laborers in a status only slightly higher than that of the Negro ... The Irishness of Huck was not lost on E. W. Kemble, the illustrator of the first edition, who emphasized that aspect of the boy's appearance more than Twain thought necessary (footnote of Twain letter to his publisher: "the boy's mouth is a trifle more Irishy than necessary" )."

Or another analysis contrasting Finn's Irishness with the vast majority of surnames in the novel being Anglo-Saxon: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27746723

Also remember that log cabins would not be seen as "Finnish"; Scandinavian, perhaps, but Finland was a border region that Sweden and Russia had fought over, and the latter had won, by the start of the nineteenth century.

Twain himself said the name was to imply "of lower extraction" than Sawyer, if you want the stereotype to hunt:

Finn was the real name of the other boy, but I tacked on the 'Huckleberry.' You see, there was something about the name 'Finn' that suited, and 'Huck Finn' was all that was needed to somehow describe another kind of boy than 'Tom Sawyer,' a boy of lower extraction or degree.

https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/onstage/mttalks.html