Names
Nõelasilm (0)
Eye of the needle. Portal at the end of what used to be a narrow street significantly enlarged by the March 9th 1944 bombing (see Harju). The Estonian name seems to be a curtailed translation of the Latin acus episcopi, where acus means needle or, by extension, eye of the needle, likely a calque on Bremen’s oldest gate, Die Natel (MLG de Natlen), aka Bischofsnadel (Bishop’s Needle) or Bischofstor (Bishop’s Gate), built sometime in the early 1200s. Being its first city gate and probably relatively small, earliest records (1274) already suggest it was designed to hinder military forces from entering the city (pretty much the job of any medieval city gate), with subsequent folk etymology accentuating the narrative to make it so small that even a horse and rider, then knight, could not pass through. And small this one is. Past names include Sunte Nyclawes stegel (St Nicholas’ steps, undated, but prob. oldest), Unter den Linden and Подъ Липовая (under the lindens, 1890), Kirchenstegel (church steps, 1913), etc. Nõelasilm was re-built and re-opened 20 August 2007 and, since the name theoretically applies to the archway itself, the alleyway is sometimes referred to as Trepi tänav, erroneously due to it already existing elsewhere, to be confirmed.
Nõgikikka (Nõgikikas)
Black woodpecker, Dryocopus martius (see Rähni). Another bird with more names than feathers. I spare you the details. Breeds in Estonia. Wiedemann gives Kampfhahn, Machetes pugnax which is the ruff (now referred to as Kampfläufer, Philomachus pugnax), with Schwarzspecht (black woodpecker), covering his perse with a question mark. Here, however, amid the assarting street-name area, it is the name of a sooty, fireplace/stove/chimney spirit, one seemingly attributed with positive qualities as seen in various Võro idioms such as one when somebody throws a child’s (hopefully milk) tooth onto or behind the stove, saying Nõgikikas, säh, sulle luuhammas, anna lapsele raudhammas (Hey, Nõgikikas, we're giving you a tooth of bone, give the child a tooth of iron). The name also seems interchangeable with Viruskikas, where virus is the top of a stove, and viruskikas (which can also be a cricket) back-translates from Võro to Estonian as kurukikas, ‘nook/cranny cock’ or, PCly, ‘nook/cranny rooster’.
