Names
Kärberi K.
(Kristjan Kärber, 1908-1977)
Builder, author of the illustrated 40-page classic Telliste kiirladumine ehitustel (speedy brick-stacking for the building-trade) and worker-hero, nominated Honorary Citizen in 1972 for “recognizing the special merits for Tallinn in the revolutionary movement in the struggle for the Soviet power, for gaining outstanding results in the economical and cultural work” (sic). Odd, though, why they keep it: Eestalgia?...
Kärbise (Kärbis)
Corn-drying rack, a roughly 2-m sapling stripped of bark and driven vertically into the ground for drying corn, flax, etc. Yet another harvest-related street created in 2023 but still unbuilt, see Kõpla.
Kärestiku (Kärestik)
Cascade, rapids. Close to those on the Pirita river.
Karja (Kari)
Essentially cattle or a herd of cattle, but other farm animals too, drove of pigs, flock of sheep, geese... and other groupings: flock (church or birds), pack of wolves, crowd and all the way down to collectives of relatives, complainants, children and empty bottles. In its earliest iterations in both MLG, vee strate (1362) or vestrate (1367) and Lat. strata pecorum (1367), platea pecorum (1369) or vicus pecorum (1373), the animals are essentially domestic, primarily cattle. The PIE root for both is *peku- ‘wealth, movable property, livestock’, with Latin evolving into Eng. ‘pecuniary’, and Old Eng. from feoh ‘cattle, money’ through ‘fief’ and ‘feudal’ to ‘fee’, while German went through its phases of MLG vē, veh, vehe, etc., OHG fihu and MHG vihe, vehe (livestock, property, assets…), it still ended up with Nutztier (‘animal to be used’). Earlier name of Suur-Karja (1885-1908).
Karja värav (Kari)
Cattle gate. Various permutations. The original cattle gate was some 50-100 m further south of today's square, Karjavärava plats, and recorded in various languages, first (1365) as porta pecorum (Lat.) or veporte (MLG vē and its multiple spellings – veh, vehe, vey, vie, vei – and meanings: cattle, four-legged animal, live possession or plain old property), meandering through Lat. porta Karien (1368) and karieporta (1375) then Ger. karienporte, karyenporte and karieporte in 1375, 1379 and 1382 respectively, reaching karja wärraw (1732) and Karripforte (1890), with wärraw/pforte ‘gate’ in the sense of passage into a city, like London’s Bishopsgate, and not in the former Nordic sense of ‘way’, ‘street’ (cf. Swedish gata, Danish gade) as in Nottingham’s Fisher or Carter gate, etc. Gate has an odd, two-path etymology. The first from PIE *ǵʰéd-, hole or ‘to defecate’, via Greek, χέζω (shit) to Proto-Germanic *gatą to Old English ġeat (both meaning hole, opening and, in MLG, that or anus, linguistically related to the northern-Germanic Geats whose name seems to derive from a Proto-Germanic verb *geuta-, ‘to pour’, something which passages do allow) and thence to our more modern meanings of passage, and the second, from Proto-Germanic *gatwǭ (which looks clearly related to its cousin above, cf. Lith. gatve < Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍄𐍅𐍉 (gatwō) through Old Norse gata which seems to be a logical offshoot of an earlier stage of the other meaning which almost by definition implies a path of some sort. Its last name before being shuffled off to history was Михайловскія ворота (Michael’s gate, 1885, etc.).
