Hobujaama (Hobu[se][posti?]jaam)
Stage, posting-stage. First known as Hermapöllsche Gasse or Hermapõllu (Herm[ann]’s [?] field) in the late 18th C, and apparently that for over 100 years with even the 1876 Tallinna linnaplan (map) still lshowing fields on either side. Later (1885), known as Jaama, (station, see Balti Jaam), with two different origin stories, both from TT: 1) A certain Heinrich Wagner had his posting stage, hobupostijaam, at No.11 Narva, whose stables stretched back to Jaama, and 2) The Sadamaraudtee (harbor railway) freight yard had offices on the corner of Jaama and Ahtri. TT finds the former explanation less likely. But neither is fully satisfactory: the freight stops are some 500 m from the northern end of the street, and streetnames tend to be ‘inside-out’, in other words named from the town center outwards, and the nearest passenger station, Viljandi Vaksal (not Peavaksal, the main one, see Hagudi) was about a kilometer away. Later (from 1907), the street was called as much Stationsgasse/straße as Станціонная ул (Stanstionnaya, see note on Russian spelling in intro) but, alongside these, Jaama remained relatively constant from 1885-1958. There are various possibilities here: the Jaama designation may well have initially referred to Wagner’s posting-stage but, between the Jaama and ‘station’ designations was a new arrival in Tallinn: the konka, or horse-drawn tram (hobutramm). The konka, probably a diminutive of Russian конь (kon'), horse (like водка [vodka] from вода [water]), started running in 1888. Yes, 3 years after the name-change… However, Tallinn has multiple examples that show the fluid nature of name changes, and written records almost certainly underestimate them too, so while Jaama may have ‘meant’ one thing first, it could also have acquired and consolidated a new meaning over time. Looking at the 1910 Pharus map of Tallinn, we see 3 main lines ending respectively in Narva, Tartu and Pärnu, with a minor branch into Viru tänav. And Hobujaama is a few meters from the heart of the network. At this point, Narva widened out, making it an ideal spot for the konka to stop. Admittedly, a better place might have been where Viru Keskus now is, a mere 60-odd Faden (fathoms, 1=1.852 m) away, ±110 m, but this would put it very close to, if in not the middle of, the Vene Turg (Russian market), now Viru väljak, so Hobujaama could be a good compromise. Motorized trams started replacing the konka in the 1920s, and the 1958 change to its current name could well reflect either nostalgia, or plain-old Arcadian wistfulness during the dull grey but slightly freer years post-Stalin. As to the earlier shift from Jaama, to ‘station’, turn-of-the-century sensibilities switching Jaam to Vaksal and Vaksal to Bahnhof or Station could easily explain the 1907 ‘upgrade’ to the more modern Stationsgasse/straße or Станціонная ул (Stanstionnaya). As an aside, the unexpected ‘n’ in Russian is because the word comes from 17th-C Polish stancja (from Latin statio, standing, residence, but where they got the ‘n’ from I do not know…, possibly a routine nasalization) and used since Peter the Great (1672-1725), to be replaced by Vaksali in the 1840s, yet another example of the fluid nature of language change… But this is all very iffy. Street part of the E67 from Helsinki to Prague.
