Lönnrot did not stop collecting poems after the Kalevala was finished, since he had in mind to "supplement" the work. In spring 1835 he set out, again combining his work with his avocation, to Viena to explore the southern and eastern limits of the poem-singing region. At the same time, he brought vaccines to Repola, having noticed on his trip a year earlier that they were wholly lacking.

Lönnrot's trip was timed to take place under the best spring travelling conditions, when the snow is hard, but not everything went according to his expectations. He ended up spending a week in the vicarage at Kuhmo. The following passage is from a letter to C.N. Keckman in which Lönnrot explains the cause of the delay.

The question "What do you think of the name Kalevala'" in the above letter has prompted certain researchers - who are unfamiliar with the relevant material - and certain Kalevala enthusiasts to speculate that the work received its name on the basis of the letter. Lönnrot had in fact given his accomplishment a name long before. He had started thinking about the name well over a year before he wrote the above letter, for at that time he sent Keckman a manuscript he was later to call "the First Kalevala." He had stopped the publication of that manuscript when he returned from his fifth field trip in order to add the contributions of Arhippa Perttunen and other singers. Suggested names for the "First Kalevala", which Lönnrot rejected even as he presented them were "Väinämöinen", "Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen", "Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen", "The mythology of the Finnish people in old poems, or Väinölä and Pohjola", and "The Kantele of Väinämöinen". These were names which Lönnrot suggested to Keckman in a letter of 14 March 1834.

The name "Kalevala" was coined at the end of 1834. After his autumn trip, on 28 November, Lönnrot wrote to J.F. Ticklen: "All autumn I have been organizing a large collection of Finnish poems into a narrative poem I call 'the Kalevala'."

Lönnrot had written two other letters to Keckman in 1835 before April (25 Feb and 9 March) in which he mentioned the name "Kalevala".

Lönnrot wrote to Keckman again after returning from his sixth field trip to collect poetry in Karelia. The letter, dated 8 May 1835, describes the route Lönnrot took on his journey.

Lönnrot collected 103 poems, some 4.500 lines, on this sixth trip.