Names
Otsatalu (Otsatalu)
Ots:otsa has various meanings, two that fit here: either tip, top, front or back of something, or a man’s name, so it could be the last farm on a village border, or Ots’ farm. Interestingly, there’s a street off Otsatalu called Oti, and while both were named on the same day after Otsa talu & Oti talu, the talu may well have been dropped from Oti to prevent confusion. The commonality in the names may signify a historical succession issue, that of a single ‘Ot’-based name forking into two for now-unknown reasons...
Otse (0)
Direct, straight. Adverb or attributive. A geometrical street-name group. See also Sirge.
Õuna (Õun)
Apple. Street in Nõmme. There used to be an Õuna between Imanta and Lembitu, known as Kasutini or Кашутинская ул after local property owner until 1922, and as õhk:õhu (air, atmosphere) in 1940-41. There is a touch of mixed-blood foreign ancestry to both õun and its southern cousin, ubin. The former possibly Indo-Iranian and the latter possibly proto-Baltic, perhaps a conflation with uba (see Oa). When the spud arrived in Estonia in the mid-18th C, northerners called it maaõun and southerners maaubin, both calqued on German Erdäpfel (earth apple). Oddly, Livonian, more in the southern range, chose ounõmōŗa (‘apple’ berry) for raspberry (see Vabarna, see also Maasika and Kaarla).
Paabusilma (Paabusilm)
Lit. peacock’s eye. Probably päeva-paabusilm, the peacock butterfly, Inachis io, although it could also be one of the saturnid moths: kevad-paabusilm, emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia or hiid-paabusilm, great peacock moth, S. pyri, etc. Apparently a renaming of a disjointed NE stretch of Udeselja. Part of a lepidopteran group. See also Piksepeni.
Paadi (Paat)
Boat. You guessed it, right next to Laeva down by the docks. This street is part of the E67 from Helsinki to Prague. Home to the beautiful wood-built Püha Siimeoni ja naisprohvet Hanna kirik (St. Simeon’s and St. Anne’s Cathedral Church) about whose lives marvellous tales are told! (see Ahtri).
Paagi (Paak)
1) Beacon, sea mark, buoy; 2) Tank, cistern, water-tower; 3) Lump. Close enough to one of Tallinn’s prime sludge producers on Paljassaare peninsula, so could be any of them but, given it was named along with two (now defunct) neighbors in June 1958 – Taagi and Toodri – all three of which elongated vertical structures, more a sea mark type of beacon than a buoy.
