Names
Püssirohu (Püssirohi)
Gunpowder, cordite. Lit. rifle weed / grass / medicine, ironically, since it was used as a medicine... After local powder store called Püssirohu ait (see Aida), demolished in 1917 and now paved over by the NE arc of the running-tracks in the Kalevi Stadium. This was not the only store, there seem to have been at least 2 more at suitable distances away from each other stretching for almost a kilometer due SW. Local lore has it that there also used to be stables for konka horses (see Hobujaama) at the Võistluse end of the street too, possible given the then green spaces nearby and the Tartu mnt section of the line ending some 50 m away near Gildi.
Pusta A. (August Pusta, 1904-1971)
Colonel (polkovnik, from polk [Ru. полк], regiment [but also ‘crowd of girls’…], ultimately from Old German *fulkaz, also giving rise to Anglo-Saxon folc [troop, detachment], Eng. folk, and cognate with Latin pleb; nothing to do with dancing where ‘polka’ is thought to come from Czech půlka (half, or half-step, see chap. L’indéchiffrable de la langue française in Français hors de France ! by the present author) of the Soviet Army’s 8th Estonian Rifle Corps. Soviet occupation renaming (1979-1994/5) of Kahu and Lummu. See title to present tome: ‘… rambling…”, I did warn you.
Püü (Püü)
Ptarmigan. Two species – Laanepüü, hazel grouse, Bonasa bonasia and rabapüü, willow ptarmigan, Lagopus lagopus – breed in Estonia. The ‘t’ of ptarmigan is wrong. The name comes from Scottish Gaelic tàrmachan, of unknown origin, and the initial pt- from the mistaken belief in a Greek origin to do with wings (ptero, wing). But no. As to its actual etymology, there is little clear evidence. Wikipedia gives 't̪ʰaɾaməxan, for ‘croaker’ referring to the bird’s call, but I find no source. Alexander MacBain’s Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language of 1896, concentrating on Scot. Gael., sheds some interesting light. For example, the dunlin (Calidris alpina) in Scot. Gael. is pollairean, meaning ‘bird of the mud pits’, where ean (and variants) means ‘bird’ and poll ‘mud’ or ‘mud pits’. So we know – as with fireun (eagle), from fior + eun (true bird) or giodhran (barnacle goose from gèadh + an (goose bird) – that the -ean, -eum, -an ending means bird. So far so good. My suggestion is that the name could derive from a combination of terms reflecting its size and habitat indicating something akin to ‘(big-)bellied bird of the plains’, from tàrr (lower belly) + magh (plain, field) + an. Could be (grossly) wrong so don’t quote me! Part of the Lilleküla bird-name group of streets. See also Ronga.
