Kopli (Koppel)

Enclosure, paddock, run. Its current name is deceptive as to its history. A koppel is indeed a paddock (but also cloister, as might be expected for religious institutions: both süsterkoppel [nuns’ cloister, other side of the road from Rannamäe 3] and Piiskopikoppel [bishop’s cloister, 700 m SW] are recorded in their various spellings in 1390), and while there are maps showing structures protecting against wolves from the Rocca al Mare forests dating back to 1681, other records indicate the same area being used for its Cambrian clay as raw material for bricks and rooftiles dating back to at least 1365. Various names of the recent past bear witness to this: other than Koppelstraße (1913) and Koppelscher Weg (date unknown), there were Telliskopli (1908), Цигельскоппельская (Tsigelskoppelskaya, 1907) Ziegelskoppelstraße (1893), Teliskopli (1885), Teiliskople (1885), where Ziegel and tellis (in the latter’s various forms) mean brick or tile in German and Estonian, both deriving from MHG zigel or MLG tēgel or teigel hinting at their respective influences (but could be conflated with Ziege, goat, if goats were also kept?). Clearly, the further back, the stronger the connection. Even so, given its three sides protected by the sea, it would still have been an ideal place to pasture long before bricks were baked. Modern-day German Koppel for belt, military or otherwise, paddock or tether all originate in the PIE *ko-ap- for ‘together’ and ‘take’, so the same word that, via old Frankish cople or couple for string, leadrope, dog’s leash, or pair, gave us ‘to couple’ as in to pair or string together (as in groups of animals or, today, trains) also forked into middle Northern German Koppel for ‘eingezäuntes Landstück’ (fenced-in plot of land), which is exactly what we were looking for, as well as English ‘to copulate’ which is also what we’re (often) looking for... Given this then, the ‘Estonian’ name cannot be that much older than its 1365 reputation for bricks, and this leads to the probably preposterous but why not spit it out suggestion that the origin of the name Tallinn could have been along the lines of either brick-built city (which I’m not too keen on), or the nickname ‘bricktown’, shifting by association from the brickworks to Tallinn. The name Talyna was first mentioned in 1536. I won’t go into a question which has been hashed and reheated for centuries without any conclusive answer and where a) the linguistics are over my head, and b) there is already a strong contender in taani linna or taanilinna for Danish town, explained according to the following route: Tanin lidna > Tanillidna > Talilinna > Tallinn, except to point out that the Danes had sold Reval to the Teutonic Knights in 1346/7, 190 years earlier, so why ‘Danish’? Names tend to designate singularity. And if we can accept such unsingular suggestions as barn/stable (tall), winter (talve), farm (talu) (see Tallinna), why not the relatively more singular brick (tellis)? Phoneticians may groan, but with only one (?) recorded instance of its written form, we cannot categorically assert that it was always pronounced ‘e’ and not ‘a’. Estonian is what I consider a ‘dark’ language compared to, say, Finnish or Karelian. In other words, it uses more of the deeper back-vowels such as ‘a’, ‘u’ and ‘õ’ than its northern neighbors with their higher-pitched front-vowels ‘ä’, ‘e’ and ‘i’ (sorry: ‘e’, ‘i’ and ‘ä’…). And although it’s true that many MLG etymons of tellis involve front-vowels: teygel, tīgel, teiel, etc., a glance at the history of German Teller (plate), for example – with its variety of MLG spellings using ‘a’ or even ‘o’: talliōr, taller, tollȫr, etc. (possibly because derived from Old French tailler, to cut), alongside ‘e’ variants such as telre, tellȫr, tellōr –, suggests that if German can happily flip the French back-diphthong ‘ai’ to front-vowel ‘e’, then Estonian ought be granted the right to shove the same German front-vowel ‘e’ to its more satisfying back position as it does with their word for plate, taldrik (see also footnote to Loode). Needless to say, this would depend upon the date of tellis’ importing from Low German. Added to this, if, as there was, there is already a brick and tile industry and area flourishing enough to be worthy of both note and naming in 1365, a singularity itself from the trade and perhaps building and defense points of view too (bricks are harder than limestone, Tallinn’s other prime building material*, as well as easier to work and carry), then the idea might not be as ridiculous as it sounds. Facetiously perhaps, Henry of Latvia (c.1229) talked of Estonians trying to pull a stone fort down with ropes, not knowing or understanding that it was held together with cement, so we are clearly dealing with something remarkable for the time. Since there is no cut-and-dried explanation that satisfies everyone, if I have done nothing but add another cat among the pigeons of Tallinn onomastics, my work here is done. Renamed (1950-1990) as Kalinini M. during the Soviet occupation.

* Limestone was already quarried on Toompea before the Danish conquest of 1219, having said that, it changes little to the above.