Names
Talviku (Talvik)
1) Yellowhammer, Emberiza citrinella, a member of the bunting family. Nominative often talvike, also known (in earlier times perhaps) in vernacular or dialect forms as jõhviklind, (cranberry bird); kadakasass (the parent term kadakasakslane or ‘Juniper German’ indicated an Estonian mimicking higher social-status Germans [see Dominiiklaste, Nurmenuku and Uus-Kalamaja]; from MLG Katesaße – Kate, peasant farmer’s or day-laborer’s hut or cottage + Saße, residence – for cottager or slum- or hovel-dweller); kaerasööja (oat-eater); kollane varblane (yellow sparrow); külmatihane (cold tit); talitsiitsitaja or tsiitsilind (tali=winter, but where the tsiitsi comes from is anybody’s business: unlikely to be from Frisian tsiis for cheese but poss. just reflecting the birdcall). Talvik:talviku is ‘umbellate wintergreen’, Chimaphila umbellata, and, for non-hibernating farmers of the past, a cow born in winter. Part of the Lilleküla bird-name group of streets. See also Tedre.
Tambeti (Tambet)
Father of the hero of Bornhöhe E.’s novel Tasuja (The Avenger), written aged 17-18. Tambet was a yeoman (free) farmer, imprisoned, left to rot and eventually die in a dungeon by Oodo, German (hence bad-guy nobleman) childhood friend of Jaanus angry at the unjust state of affairs (plebs getting ideas above their station), killed in turn by Jaanus, the eponymous avenger, during the Jüriöö Ülestõus. Appropriately, a fictional street or perhaps footpath alongside a questionable railway track in the hinterland of Peterburi, along with Tõrviku and Tõivu. Sadly, between the first edition and the present one, the road announced in 2008 seems to have been left to rot and eventually abandoned. No sign of it anywhere, despite the neighboring Jüriöö park next door.
Tamme (Tamm)
Oak. harilik tamm (common oak), aka hiiepuu (sacred oak), talitamm (winter oak), suvitamm (summer oak), pedunculate or English oak, Quercus robur (which gives us the word ‘robust’). See also Tõru. Although the oldest oaks in Tallinn (Kadrioru) today are some 350 years old, they are dwarfed by the tuhandeaastane tamm (thousand-year-old oak) that used to grow beside Kopli beach. One hears. But see the Tamme-Lauri oak in Hiidtamme. The similarity of Gaulish tanno, holm oak, to Estonian is fortuitous.
