Names
Edela (Edel)
South-west, south-western, south-westerly. Also süüdvest among sailors. Estonian is one of those rare languages which still has actual names for ordinal, or intercardinal, directions (NE, SE, SW & NW). Note that Estonian edel = Finnish lounas, and Est. lõuna = Fi. etelä (see table below), and that both Est. & Fi. ‘north’ are cognate with a sense of beneathness (Est. merepõhi, for example, means sea floor) as is also Old Norse norðr, poss. derived from PIE *ner-, left or below, since that’s where it is when facing the rising sun, and cognate with Sanskrit nārakaḥ, नारक, Eng. beneath and nether, and Gk νέρτερος (nerteros), under, deeper, the nether world, the dead. Similarly, west, vestr, etc., comes from a PIE root suggesting behindness, where the sun would be if you face east(ish), while Lithuanian vakar, yesterday, vakaras, evening, and vakarai, west, are all related to Latin vesper and the Greek Hesperides, the nymphs of evening and sunsets, strongly suggesting our IE ancestors’ key direction was east. For more on the oddities of Nordic compass points, see Loode. The interrelation of compass points between various Finnic languages is, shall we say, complicated... See below, for example Liv. idā does not map onto its Est. cognate ida, but kirre, South has 3 conflicting etymons, and Liv. lēņtš ≠ Est. lääs, but edel... And while Ida (east), is equivalent to ON austr – cognate with Lith. aušra, dawn, daybreak, Greek αυγή (auge), sunlight, dawn, and even Vedic Sanskrit uṣā́s, dawn – and related to shining, gold, aurora and rosy-fingered dawn, it later gives us austral, or southern, while the Sami for east is nuorti, probably a loan-word, but suggesting a rotational effect perhaps related to latitude. I think that’s quite enough...
| English | Estonian | Finnish | Livonian | Old Norse |
| N | Põhi | Pohjoinen | Pū’oj | Norðr |
| NE | Kirre | Koillinen | Idā | |
| E | Ida | Itä | Ūomõg | Austr |
| SE | Kagu | Kaakko | Lȭinag? | |
| S | Lõuna | Etelä | Lȭinag? | Suðr |
| SW | Edel | Lounas | Lēņtš | |
| W | Lääs | Länsi | Ve’žgõr | Vestr |
| WNW | Vesikaar | |||
| NW | Loe | Luode | Lūod |
The street used to be in the docks, now in Kivimäe, and pointing – Tallinn toponymy oblige – south-east... See Vesikaare. Interestingly, switches such as these are not restricted to Finnic languages. The Hebrew for winter, חורף (xōref), is cognate with the Arabic for autumn, خريف (xarīf), while the Arabic for winter, شتاء (šitāʾ), is cognate with the Hebrew for autumn, סתיו (stav), which also used to mean winter, but changed at one point.
Edu (Edu)
Success, progress, advancement. Very odd. Street started life as Puhke. From 1940-1941, during the first Soviet Occupation, it was renamed Karge, crisp or harsh, before reverting to its original name. Named Põua, drought, from 1959-1960, when it acquired its current name. Part of a metaphysical street-name group. See Lootuse.
Eerikneeme (Eerikneem)
Eric’s Cape (point, headland, foreland) on Aegna island, site of one of Estonia’s approximately 9 stone labyrinths (rough location ///slamming.grape.sinister) built by Swedish settlers from the early medieval ages to the 1700s, and known variously as Town of Troy, City or Ruins of Jerusalem, Mount Jerusalem, Virgin’s Dance or Giant’s Garden. Interestingly, its axis of symmetry is NW-SE, with its ‘entrance’ at the NW (see Loode)... Labyrinths of this nature seem to have been first recorded by Karl Ernst von Baer (see Tammsaare A.H.), one in the Kola peninsula village of Поно́й (Ponoy, derived from ‘Sami’ [dialect unspecified] pienneoi, dog river [see Piksepeni]), which a local claimed to be called Вавилонъ (Babylon). Others have been located in Boughton, UK (the outline of a labyrinth can be detected in aerial photos), Visby (Sweden), on the 30-odd-m² Russian islet Острова Виргины (Ostrova Virginy) / Länsi-Viiri (///obverse.underinsured.imposes, very small, may need to zoom in or out to see), on Hiiumaa, etc., and seem to have accompanied the ‘Viking’ migrations but, sensu Baer, may have Finnish or Russian origins. One of the island’s six roads. See also Kalavälja.
