Kaskede (Kased [pl.])

Birches, birch-trees. (Sing.: Kask, see previous entry: Kase).

Käsperti J.

(Johannes Käspert, 1886-1937)

Asjaajaja (nice word – try saying this late one Friday night: majarajaja asjaajaja ja jalavajaja jama ajavad, meaning, if you’re really desperate to know how contrived these things can be: “the housebuilder’s records clerk and a legless man are bluffing”, but see also Kadaka), or Secretary of the short-lived (about six months) Soviet of the Commune of the Working People of Estonia, presumably executed during Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937-38. Soviet occupation renaming of Hiiu-Suurtüki in Nõmme, 1959-1960, then in 1960-1987/90 of Suurtüki / Kotzebue.

Kassi (Kass)

Cat. After local farm of that name. Kass is also a surname (e.g. Carmen, the supermodel chess-player) and animal names were a popular choice for Estonians to adopt as they went through various phases of emancipation. It’s a long story and far too complex for the present but, very briefly, Estonian peasants were usually named by and/or after the farm or estate they worked on. At the turn of the 19^th C, along with the abolition of serfdom, they were allowed to choose their own names (but nothing vulgar or blasphemous, perhaps a copy-and-paste effect of events in Revolutionary France). In the 1840s, over 100,000 Lutheran peasants switched camp to Orthodoxy (regretting it later, but that’s another story) and also switched names. Later again, another wave of occurred during the National Awakening, (see, e.g. Kreutzwaldi F.R.) with Koidula and co opting for symbolic Estonian names, acting as role models for others, Then in 1903, another novel idea popped up: find a placename ending in -vere, drop that bit and discover a real, old, traditional Estonian name, ending the stem in -o for men (possibly influencing that of Asso) and -e or -a for women. There may well be more. Can’t keep up with the buggers.

Kassikäpa (Kassikäpp)

Catsfoot, Cat’s-ear or, as I’m led to believe pussytoes, Antennaria spp., a herbaceous perennial.

Kassisaba (Kassisaba)

The name of the district is often accused of coming from the German military term Katze for an elevated bastion (none found), and the road leading from it as its tail (Ger. Schwanz, which also means ‘dick’). This is almost certainly wrong. A) Ger. Katze has a multitude of meanings and no self-respecting army would name or nickname one of its defensive structures after a vagina, trollop, flighty woman or prostitute, no matter how cute and cuddly its primary definition; and B) Estonia has had at least half a dozen farms or bits of village called Kassisaba anyway, hardly fighting stuff, especially the flower of that name: spiked speedwell, Veronica spicata. It is almost certainly a legacy misrecollection of Ger. Schanze, ‘sconce’ in English, which is indeed an elevated fortification (such as a redoubt), often protected by a couvreface, but a term so rarely used that even Tristam Shandy’ Uncle Toby failed to mention it once… As to the ‘tail’, the point of a bastion is to avoid having a road either to it or from it, so my suggestion is a bilingual mistranslation, with Schanze sounding like Schwanz (tail), and Katze, a possibly humorous or intentional misreading of Est. Kaitse (defense)’, so just a plain old defensive bastion. Part of Paldiski maantee was once known as kassi sabba.