Kinga (King)
Shoe street. Always has been, although the names more often suggested the maker: strata calcificum (1357), platea sutorum (1364), schohmekerstrate (1405), Schuhmacherstraße (1740) and Schusterstraße (1803) than the object: schostrate (1374), Schohstrate (?), Schuhstraße (1806), and Schuhgasse (1893) Башмачная (Bashmachnaya, pre-16th-C loan from the Golden Horde’s Chagatai Turkic bašmak for sole or shoe) (1872). Clearly, a very pedestrian precinct and, presumably, well-cobbled. Interestingly, the shoe ‘shops’ stretched down the street all the way along the western façade of Raekoja plats, as indicated by Nottbeck’s 1439 indication of Dunkri’s location: klene strate bi den sc(h)oboden alse men geit na dem sternsode (little street by the shoe shops by which you get to the ‘Sternsode’), see Rataskaevu. Boden itself has an interesting etymology: in MLG, bōdem meant bottom, ground (cf. German Fußboden, floor, distantly related to Albanian botë, earth, the world), support, lower surface (as in market stall?), or, likely in parallel, MLG bōde (hut, tent, abode), evolving (16th C?) into shop, usually with living quarters above. At one stage in the later Middle Ages, shoemakers were required to not work from home due to the risk of their substituting good-quality leather by poor, less easy to do in the public eye. Another lead is the 1415 Livonian Order order that fishermen in Kalamaja could build vischer boden (fish stalls?) with turf decks as deep as they wanted but no more than 3 logs above ground, suggesting a cool storage area underground and display level above. As to why the ground surface is uneven today remains to be investigated.
