Names
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.
Tammede (Tammed [pl.])
Oaks. (Sing.: see Tamme).
Tammepärja (Tammepärg)
Oak wreath, oak garland. Street name might have replaced that of the eastern half of Pärja in 1989, but for what possible reason I cannot fathom.
Tammiku (Tammik)
Oak grove.
Tammsaare A.H.
(Anton Hansen Tammsaare, 1878-1940)
One of the best-known Estonian novelists, author of the 5-volume masterpiece, Tõde ja Õigus (Truth and Justice, 1926-1933) chronicling the change from life on the land to life in town in 20th-C Estonia, and currently being translated into 3 volumes. Vol. 1, Vargamäe, and Vol. 2, Indrek, are available from your local bookshop. See also his Tammsaare museum in Koidula. His portrait is on the 25-krooni note (for information on Estonian currency, see Krooni). Clearly, there’s never much money in it for writers... on the other hand, embryologists get even less. Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) – first to establish that mammals develop from eggs – is only worth a 2-krooni banknote, but he was one of Darwin’s major critics. Bastard.
