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How does the Finnish word kuningas support the reconstruction of an early Germanic word for “king”?

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Thematic map of Europe displaying the distribution of Germanic languages, with different colors indicating regions where English, German, Netherlandic (Dutch), Frisian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are spoken. Striped areas mark regions where bilingualism is common, and language regions cover countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and parts of surrounding countries. — Germanic languages Distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe.

The Finnish word kuningas serves as a valuable piece of evidence for linguists reconstructing the early Germanic word for "king" because it is a loanword that preserves an older form of the term.

While the Proto-Germanic form is reconstructed as *kuningaz, the word has undergone significant phonological reduction and change in modern Germanic languages—for example, evolving into König in German, konge in Danish, and king in English. Because Finnish is not a Germanic language, it borrowed the term from an early stage of Germanic and assimilated it into its own phonological patterns, effectively "freezing" a version of the word that reflects its earlier structure. By comparing the Finnish kuningas with the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *kuningaz, scholars can confirm the original form and better understand the linguistic evolution that occurred within the Germanic language family itself.123