Kauba (Kaup)

Goods, wares, merchandise, due to street leading to Tallinn-Väike. A mongrel loanword to say the least. Earliest focal root is probably Lat. caupo (innkeeper or trader), synonymous or shared with copo (the female of which is copa, ±barmaid*), and seems to have spread northward with Roman soldiers, becoming *kaupa-n (to trade/trader) in West Germanic, evolving into the usual culprits of Ger. Kauf, Swedish köp, etc., as well as Old Eng. cīepa and cēap, ending up as ‘cheap’. It spread north-eastward to Dan. Copenhagen, København (±trading ‘haven’, but see Hobusepea) of earliest recorded name (11^th C ) Køpmannæhafn (Traders’/Merchants’ harbor). Further east again, it lent itself to Finnish for ‘city’, kaupunki (market place), via an archaic dialect or earlier Eastern Scandinavian *köupungR or Old Gutnish *kaupunger. Street previously called Frachtstraße / Waarenstraße (freight or goods, in Ger.), and Товарная (other than its smiling brotherly ‘Comrade’, Rus. Tovarich seems also to have meant someone with whom a sharing of goods or commodities, property or cattle, was involved).

* That Lat. cupa or cuppa (large wooden jar or barrel), generating Eng. cup, Fr. coupe, etc., is related is both very tempting but uncertain.