Names
Nurmenuku (Nurmenukk)
Cowslip, Primula veris, full name harilik nurmenukk, literal translation uncertain: common (yes) meadow (yes) projecting part (sort of, if you look at the flower). Other names, which often sound bizarre but sometimes just reflect a similarity of shape, include kanavarvas (chicken toe), käekaatsad (work trousers made from tow or linen), taevavõti (heavenly key, key to heaven, perhaps reflecting their looking like bloomers and corresponding bliss once opened?), saksapüksid (German, i.e. posh, trousers), kikkapüksi (trousers that stand up on their own? Some Hell’s Angels had a rather unsanitary cultish behavior revolving around this*...), piimapisarad (drops of milk), pääsulill (escape/salvation flower), and even kanaperse (chicken’s arse). As we see, consensus rules. One of the Mähe flower-name group, see Oblika.
* If you’re really desperate to know, it involved urinating on their jeans so often they’d stand up on their own.
Oblika (Oblikas)
Sorrel, dock, Rumex. Leaves of the broad-leaved dock, Rumex obtusifolius, traditionally used to soothe brushes with stinging-nettles; research has shown them to contain anti-histamines. One of the Mähe flower-name group, see Palderjani.
Oda (Oda)
Spear, lance or bishop in chess. One of the shortest streets in Tallinn, and one of a mini target-practice group, odd choice of weapon, but hey... See Vibu.
Odra (Oder)
Barley. Not in the cereal-names street zone (see Kaera) but close to a former brewery, Rewalia, belonging to the Saku Õlletehas (beer-manufacture) company, most of which left Tallinn in 1911 and returned to its home-town of Saku where beer had been brewed on the Saku estate since 1820, leaving some offices and a bottling-plant in the former St Michael’s Convent (see Nunnadetagune torn). In 1928, the then standard half-toop bottle was phased out in favor of the 0.5-liter; although what exactly a toop – a shtoff or stoup in English apparently – was is not clear. It seems to have been a metal mug used both for measuring and for drinking, representing one tenth of a pang, another unit of measurement, or bucket (and, declining pang:pange, no relation to Panga), but this would have been the Russian toop (1.23 liters). The Tallinn toop was 1.18. Measurement units in the past were highly variable. TT, on the other hand, relates it to proximity to the former Maneež barracks (not the same, but see Maneeži), which makes sense too (horses, oats…). Known first (1882) in German, Gerstenstr., then Russian (1907), Ячменная (Yachmennaya), for barley, one year before becoming Estonian.
