Names
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.
Ogaliku (Ogalik)
Stickleback. Despite the importance of sticklebacks to the development of ethology, the street this name was given to in 1995 was gutted six years later. Then, adding insult to injury, they gave it to another street and, less than 12 weeks later, binned it again! What have they got against sticklebacks? They don’t even have Raudkiisk (cf. Kiisa), the sea stickleback or, is it’s known in Ireland, 15-spined stickleback, only true marine Gasterostid, so lovingly linnaeanized as Spinachia spinachia (raud = iron > spinach, Popeye...). All wrong of course: spinach, originally ‘Spanish vegetable’, actually contains less available iron than cauliflower. The story has it that, way back in the 1870s, a certain German Dr. E von Wolf published a paper giving spinach’s iron content as 10 times higher than it was due to a misplaced decimal point. Maybe, but the certain German Doktor has proved remarkably elusive and the whole thing may well be an urban legend, perhaps cooked up to exculpate the Sailor Man’s creators for their blathering nonsense. Either way, a tricky piece of greenery. As the decidedly odd US lawyer Clarence Darrow once said: “I don’t like spinach, and I’m glad I don’t, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and I just hate it”. The stickleback (or tittlebat as Pickwick would call the three-spined variety) is a noble fish, a close relative to the sea-horse and scaleless as a dolphin, it is a nest-builder and tender wetnurse of relatively cuddly sticklebabies cynically abandoned by an uncaring mother. See Maimu.
