In The Midwife by Katja Kettu, the central character, Wild-Eye, rescues a young Skolt girl named Masha from being killed by the SS. For the rest of the book, Masha addresses Wild-Eye as "Parmuska".
From context, I assumed that "Parmuska" was a term of respect that a young girl might use to address an older woman. But looking though Finnish dictionaries hasn't turned the word up. There is a complication in that Masha spoke her native language as well as Finnish, and so "Parmuska" may come from that. We are not explicitly told what her native tongue is, however, although it would be plausible for it to be some form of Sámi. Other words she speaks include:
Da, da, Masha eagerly assured me, and told me her Babushka used to make her a kite every year at around this time.
Why?
“Den razdeniya. Birthday,“ she told me.
The "da" and "Babushka" seem Russian, but "den razdeniya" doesn't (Google Translate suggests Bulgarian). Another phrase she says:
"The sorrel was in blossom when they found me in the woods. Miehcest von tam kavnim, my Babushka used to say.”
cannot be translated by Google Translate.
My question is, what does "Parmuska" mean, and what language is it from?
[Just to confirm, "Parmuska" does occur in the original Finnish text, i.e. it was not introduced in the process of translating the book to English. For example, Masha's plaintive request, "Parmuska, will you make me a kite?" is the translation from "Parmuska, tehet sie minule leijan?"]
