Kassi (Kass)
Cat. After local farm of that name. Kass is also a surname (e.g. Carmen, the supermodel chess-player) and animal names were a popular choice for Estonians to adopt as they went through various phases of emancipation. It’s a long story and far too complex for the present but, very briefly, Estonian peasants were usually named by and/or after the farm or estate they worked on. At the turn of the 19th C, along with the abolition of serfdom, they were allowed to choose their own names (but nothing vulgar or blasphemous, perhaps a copy-and-paste effect of events in Revolutionary France). In the 1840s, over 100,000 Lutheran peasants switched camp to Orthodoxy (regretting it later, but that’s another story) and also switched names. Later again, another wave of occurred during the National Awakening, (see, e.g. Kreutzwaldi F.R.) with Koidula and co opting for symbolic Estonian names, acting as role models for others, Then in 1903, another novel idea popped up: find a placename ending in -vere, drop that bit and discover a real, old, traditional Estonian name, ending the stem in -o for men (possibly influencing that of Asso) and -e or -a for women. There may well be more. Can’t keep up with the buggers.
