Oulu
| Oulu Uleåborg |
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| City | |||
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Oulun kaupunki Uleåborg stad |
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Top: Rantakatu in downtown Oulu, Oulu City Hall
Middle: Oulun Lyseon Lukio and the Oulu Cathedral Bottom: Shops along Kirkkokatu, Radisson Blu Hotel along Ojakatu |
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 Location of Oulu in Finland |
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| Coordinates: 65°01′N 025°28′E / 65.017°N 25.467°ECoordinates: 65°01′N 025°28′E / 65.017°N 25.467°E | |||
| Country |
 Finland
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| Region |
 Northern Ostrobothnia
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| Sub-region | Oulu sub-region | ||
| Charter | 1605-04-08 | ||
| Government | |||
| • City manager | |||
| Area (2016-01-01) | |||
| • City | 3,031.64 km2 (1,170.52 sq mi) | ||
| • Land | 1,410.17 km2 (544.47 sq mi) | ||
| • Water | 103.2 km2 (39.8 sq mi) | ||
| • Urban | 187.1 km2 (72.2 sq mi) | ||
| Area rank | 17th largest in Finland | ||
| Population (2016-03-31) | |||
| • City | 198,804 | ||
| • Rank | 5th largest in Finland | ||
| • Density | 140.98/km2 (365.1/sq mi) | ||
| • Urban | 200,071 | ||
| • Urban density | 915.8/km2 (2,372/sq mi) | ||
| Population by native language | |||
| • Finnish | 97.3% (official) | ||
| • Swedish | 0.2% | ||
| • Others | 2.4% | ||
| Population by age | |||
| • 0 to 14 | 17% | ||
| • 15 to 64 | 70.5% | ||
| • 65 or older | 12.5% | ||
| Time zone | EET (UTC+2) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | EEST (UTC+3) | ||
| Municipal tax rate | 19% | ||
| Website | www.ouka.fi | ||
Oulu (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈoulu]; Swedish: Uleåborg [ˌʉːleɔˈbɔrj]) is a city and municipality of 198,804 inhabitants (31 March 2016) in the region of Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland. It is the most populous city in Northern Finland and the fifth most populous city in the country. There are no larger cities (outside of Russia) that are more northerly than Oulu. It is also considered one of Europe's "living labs", where residents experiment with new technology (such as NFC tags and ubi-screens) at a community-wide scale.
The city is named after the river Oulujoki, which originates in the lake Oulujärvi. There have been a number of other theories for the origin of the name Oulu. One possible source for the name Oulu is a word in the Sami language meaning 'flood water', but there are other suggestions. At minimum, the structure of the word requires that, if originally given by speakers of a Uralic language, the name must be a derivative. In all likelihood, it also predates Finnish settlement and is thus a loanword from one of the now-extinct Saami languages once spoken in the area.
The most probable theory is that the name derives from the Finnish dialectal word oulu, meaning "floodwater", which is related to e.g. Southern Sami åulo, meaning "melted snow", åulot meaning "thaw" (of unknown ultimate origin). Two other word families have also been speculated to be related. The first is seen in the Northern Savo dialectal word uula and its Sami counterpart oalli, both meaning "river channel". The second is the Uralic root reconstructed as *uwa, meaning "river bed" (reflected as vuo in modern Finnish, also in derivatives such as vuolas "heavy-flowing"). To either of these roots, some Sami variety would have to be assumed having added further derivational suffixes.
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