Names
Aaviku (Aavik)
Found on some maps of Tallinn, where it doesn’t exist, but does in nearby Rae. Named after a farm and not, regrettably, after the best known of the Aavik family: Johannes (1880-1973), inventor of numerous language reforms and neologisms (oddly, the ones most people recall, dare we raise the cranial lid on the Estonian subconscious, are relv, weapon, from revolver, and mõrv, murder, from German Mord), as well as translator (although some would say ‘re-writer’) of Maupassant, Edgar Allen Poe, Turgenev, Mika Waltari, and a dab of Sophocles, Apuleius, etc., An all-round linguist with, in addition to the languages implied above, German, Livonian, Mordvin, Swedish, and varying degrees of familiarity with Arabic, plus other Slavic and Finnic languages... Either way, given Estonia’s istory of ‘H’-denial (see Wiedemann’s orthographically nightmarish dictionary Ehstnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch), the name probably derives from haavik anyway (see Haaviku).
Abaja (Abajas)
Cove, creek, inlet, bight, or, according to Saagpakk, pool or quagmire. Being named after the Varsaallika inlet, one may hazard a guess as to which acception is least unlikely. Wiedemann F.J. gives its German as Bachbusen or Meerbusen (stream… or sea…) and since the primary meaning of Busen is bust or bosom, he seems to understand it more as something rounded, like a cove, bay or bight.
Abara (Abar)
Multi-part net for catching fish: either the longer version with three funnel-shaped nets preventing return, or the trammel net, consisting of both fine and wide mesh, where the fish pushes the former through the latter, trapping itself in the resulting pouch. At various stages of Tallinn’s past, new or developing neighborhoods were given names revolving around a common theme. This one – on the Kakumäe peninsula, site of former fish-processing and -refrigeration plants – is part of a fishing-tackle group, see Ahingu, interspersed among a fish name group, see Ahvena.
