Names
1. liin (0)
1st line. Streets 1. liin to 5. liin are calqued on the ‘Lines’ of Saint Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island, where each one was originally the line of houses either side of a canal (later filled in). Tallinn’s 1. Liin today is in a sorry state: an abandoned wasteland of burned-out houses, shipping containers and a sense of desolation. But take heart, like its more thoroughbred thoroughfares, it will be redeveloped. As a reminder on the Estonian concept of street (see Introduction), 1. liin is actually two streets parallel to each other, although ‘streets’ is stretching things a bit too.
Also, as another reminder, if the street name is already in the nominative (rare), its usual place in brackets is left as ‘0’.
1. Tehase (1. Tehas)
Tehas is a works or factory, and Tallinn had a number of streets called this, five of them – 1. Tehase ... 5. Tehase – in Pae and eliminated in 1984 (and not, as mistakenly stated in the first edition “scuppered by the building of Admiraliteedi bassein”, which is almost 5 km away). KNAB does not record a 6. Tehase but does list 7. Tehase sadam, this renamed as Noblessneri sadam. Likewise, the one-time Tehase tänav is now called Naaritsa. The present entry also presages the protean orthography of Tallinn toponymy: whereas the previous entry, 1. liin, must be writ in lower-case, this one was capitalized. It gets worse, see Patriarh Aleksius II.
NB: for those who don’t read introductions, forget fast or need constant reminders: headwords of street names no longer in existence, mainly former Soviet namings, are struck through.
2. liin (0)
2nd line. Like 1. liin, two parallel thoroughfares. All 5 liinid were named or renamed in 1951 (quick Estonian grammar lesson: most plurals tack a -d onto the genitive, so where liin is the nominative and liini is the genitive, the plural becomes liinid).
20. Augusti (0)
Opened on 2011-08-20, commemorating the day in 1991 when the Republic of Estonia’s independence was decided and restored, now a national holiday: Taasiseseisvumispäev (Day of Restoration of Independence). Place-name (väljak), not street-name, covering essentially the same plot as Harjumägi, and not easy to tease the two apart (this is the superstructure on top of the hill). NB: not to be confused with Independence Day (Eesti Vabariigi aastapäev or Eesti iseseisvuspäev), which was 1918-02-24.
21. Juuli (0)
One month and five days after the Red Army paid its respects to Estonia on 16th June 1940, the state was offered preferred Soviet neighbor status, and elected, navy-style (lots of rigging), to open shop as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Name given to Mustakivi from 1980-1989.
21. Juuni (0):
Temporary naming of Vabaduse puiestee from 1940-1941, celebrating the glorious (please note the sound of sarcastic keystrokes) date of Estonia’s full military occupation by the Soviet Union in 1940.
