Köleri J.

(Johann Köler, 1826-1899)

Painter, aka Ivan Petrovich Köler-Viliandi, worked mainly in St Petersburg. Portraitist to the Russian imperial family, noted for his 1864 Fr. R. Kreutzwaldi portree (or Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald reading “The Kalevipoeg” in manuscript) in the Estonian History Museum, Pikk, and his 1879 Tulge minu juurde kõik, kes teie vaevatud ja koormatud olete, mina tahan teile hingamist saata (Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28), a huge painting in the Tallinn Kaarli Kirik, attached to the wall, they say, by some 5000 nails. Along with Jakobsoni C.R. and others, member of ‘the Petersburg patriots’. Street known as Datschi (datcha) in the 1910-20s (see Õie).

Kolhoosi (Kolhoos)

Kolkhoz, contraction of коллективное хозяйство (kollektivnoje hozjaistvo, collective ownership) or collective farm. Euphemism for USSR bankruptcy. Soviet occupation renaming (1950-1990) of Gildi.

Kollane (Adj.)

Yellow. Named after the yellow-painted wooden barracks demolished in 1870. Street names indicated by an adjective (occasionally an adverb or attributive) are in the nominative. As to why, however, it is not quite clear: the street was never entirely yellow in the first place. Perhaps the thought that an adjective requires a noun? Or to avoid the awkward use of a substantivized adjective, ‘the yellow’, or the idea of ‘yellowness’ (kollasuse)? But while ‘yellow street’ is strange, ‘street of the yellow’ sounds strange, and that in itself is a greater wrong to inflict upon an innocent name. See also Punane.

Kõlviku (Kõlvik)

Arable land, farmland. Either running out of names or, equally likely, because built on former farmland. An outlier of the Mähe flower-name group, see Käokeele.

Komandandi (Komandant)

Commandant. In 1856, Hans Heinrich Falck (see Falgi) bet Tallinn governor Baron Alexander Woldemar von Saltza (1801-1884, oddly, seemingly unrelated to Hermann von Salza [c. 1165-1239], fourth Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights) that he could build a road from Toompea to Paldiski within a month (which he paid for largely out of his own pocket). Falck won. Having lost the bet, Salza built this one at his own expense in 1860-61, earning its name of Kommandanten-Steg (commandant [foot-]bridge, 1882, see above-mentioned Toompea for details), later (1948-1989) purged and merged with Falgi into Nõukogude during the Soviet occupation, and renamed as Kominterni for a couple of months in 1941.