Liiva (Liiv) 
Sand, gravel. Sand. Having long been a subliminal silicon stratum of the country’s chthonic consciousness, it has also been the alter ego of multiple highways and byways of Tallinn and Estonia in general. Here, one of Tallinn’s historically even sandier areas. TAAK also gives it as named for being on a sandy area, and there used to be an inn called Liiva Krug, somewhere between the southern end of Saeveski and the bend in Viljandi mnt dating back to at least 1798. Tallinn’s early history seems to have had only two recorded locations involving the word sand: mons arenae (sand hill), 1312, present-day Olevimägi, and porta arenae (sand gate), probably same period, present-day Väike Rannavärav. On the other hand, the earliest recorded street-name containing the Estonian word liiv is Väike-Liiva (1850), now Ravi. Judging by F. Eurich’s 1879 map of Tallinn (Folio V) (see below) there used to be extensive sand flats south of Juhkentali, and various maps of the 1920s show large areas of dunes around the north-western shores of lake Järve. Likewise, the anonymous 1698 map of ‘Stadt Räfwal’ [still looking for digital copy] describes what looks like the Kadriorg area as Lauter Sand(t)gruften und Hugel (nothing but sandpits and mounds). So sand has clearly long played an important part in Estonian memory. Including the 16 Liiva villages, 24 hills and 76 streets or roads, Estonia has some 300-odd placenames involving sand. It means something to them. It is possible that Harju also refers to sand (cf. Finnish harju ‘sandy bank or shoal...’), and the name Livonia ‘has been said’ to originate from liiv, sand, too. Earliest mention of Livonia is recorded as Ливы (Liwa) in the Russian Primary Chronicle (Chronicle of Nestor), dating back to 1113. Again, one of the present-day self-designations of Kurland Livonians is Rāndalist, or coast/beach-dwellers, but this may simply reflect the sardonic self-naming of a remaining fringe of a once more widely distributed people. So, why the obsession with sand? The reason is actually quite simple: sand was there. Without attempting to reconstruct the history of Estonia since its early days in the continent of Baltica next to ‘Amazonia’ and ‘Siberia’ (ca. 500 MY BP), over the past 40 million years or so, the Baltic sea area has ranged between ‘river’, lake, ‘estuary’, inland sea and sea. This has understandably had a huge influence on its shape, geology and geography. In 2008-2010, 2 viking ships were discovered near what used to be the coastline of Salme, Saaremaa, itself about 1.5 m above water level. Further, the location is 230 m from the present coastline and 4 m above present water level (for more details, see The Salme Shipfind. As the ice age ended and the immense weight of its kilometer-thick mantle of ice melted away, the land rose due to a phenomenon called the postglacial rebound of Fennoscandia (with possible influence of the Fennoscandian Shield periphery underlying the East European Platform), and shorelines rose out of the sea, resulting in widespread deposits of washed-up, saltated sand across the country. So the name Livonia actually originating from liiv is not far-fetched at all. Also name of nearby station (3rd from Balti Jaam) on the Tallinn-Pärnu and Tallinn-ViljandiTallinn-Viljandi lines.
