Tarabella (0)

Not the obscure mythological deity it has been assumed to represent, but the name of city councilor and arbitrageur Albert Koba’s dog. Born 1878, Koba was also a busy real-estate developer, creating and naming streets in Lilleküla (see Endla), Pelgulinn (this one, see below) and Sikupilli (Asunduse), many named after the more bipedal members of his family. Despite the rumors, there seem to be only five (maybe six) ‘Kobaesque’ street names attributed to him in all: the present one, renamed Timuti in 1939; his own: Alberti, now Roo; Olga, his blameless better half (divorced 1927), now Pebre (another Olga once existed, now Vainu, but perhaps a bit far from his usual haunts); Oskari, now Ristiku, and Grigori, now Õie, both after after local alderman Oskar Gregory (friend? business partner? in-law? bear or seal?...). Another street, poss. the sixth, Sambla, now Nabra, named on the same date as Olga, can be seen on the 1922 map of Tallinn, but no information on this found so far.Koba’s name seems to have once been spelled Kooba, a word related to (from?) the Võro* (his parents were from Tartu) kooba, an outdoor, semi-underground cellar for storing potatoes. That’s growth.

* For spelling, see Kõivu.

Kõrgepea nukk (0)

High-head knoll, Not a street, a hill (or hilly area) some 60 m above sea level, one of the the highest points in Tallinn, and related to enough names to merit an explanation. First mentioned in 1371 as a border marker of the city as dat hoghe houed ghenomet (named the high hoved, the ‘u’ being understood as ‘v’), translated from MLG to Est. as ‘high-head’. Later historians have also called it Kaldapea, ambiguous enough to mean either ‘bank-head’ (‘bank-peak’?) or ‘on top of a klint escarpment’. Both translations – MLG to Est. and MLG to mod. Ger. (see Lossi) – understood hoved in the more northern Germanic sense too (MLG hȫvet, head, cf. mod. Swed huvud) which fits the knoll’s topography. And this is probably the case. Now, some people on this site do go on a bit about spelling variations but the parchment in question (see digar.ee TLA 230.1-I.325) writes hoved not hovet. If intentionally and not specifically designating it as a ‘head’ / ‘peak’, it (hōve or hōvede) could also mean small farmstead, fief or similar plot of land, or even – given Tallinn’s intriguing history of outlaw escape rooms (Pelgulinn, Pääsküla, etc.) – since hōven meant both to ‘hold court’ and ‘grant refuge’, this salient point could have been a symbolic landmark on the border where, leaving Tallinn jursidiction, sanctuary was reached? Nothing certain here, ‘farm’ is unlikely: a border through someone’s property would open a massive legal and logistical can of worms. But?... Even if some people believe that a ‘one in a million’ chance happens once every ten times, it’s still probably ‘head’. Sorry to waste your time…

Tobiase R.

(Rudolf Tobias, 1873-1918)

First professional Estonian composer, whose Julius Caesar was also the country’s first symphonic work. Face on the front of the 50-krooni banknote with the Estonian Opera House on the back (for information on Estonian currency, see Krooni). Previously Slobodka (1908), Slabodka (1910), Slobotka (1921) and Slobodi (-1923) with the latter’s starting date unspecified, after the 19^th-C expansion of Peter I’s Russian quarter, or ‘Слобода’ (sloboda), around today’s Roheline aas and Poska for servants and other employees at Kadriorg Palace (see Vana Slobodaa).

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