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WW Passaaž
(Wassili [Semjon] Woinoff, 1877-1942)
Wassili Woinoff, full name Василий Семен Воинов, businessman and one-time owner of the underlying real estate (1910s) plus the Grand Marina cinema (which also showed circus performances, possibly explaining details below) at No.5 Mere puiestee (built 1912? to entertain the Tsar’s soldiers, later returned to the people as a Soviet naval officers’ [only] club, today the Russian Cultural Center), reputedly the wealthiest man in Estonia prior to deportation to the Urals on assumption of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Named by his grandson, one of the mall developers, Oleg Sapožnin, honorary president of the Eesti Jalgratturite Liit (Estonian Cyclists’ Union), son of Vladimir ‘Boba’ Sapožnin (1906-96), who began his professional life in a circus at the age of five, progressing to polyinstrumentalist and, later, violin virtuoso as well as friend of David Oistrakh, violinist and one-time volunteer of the Soviet Union’s wartime Moscow Home Reserves. Not exactly a street, WW Passaaž mini shopping-mall was opened after much brouhaha from the antiquities department in 1997-04-19.
Vikimõisa (Vikimõis) 
Uncertain 2023 addition to Tallinn’s streets, if street inded it is. Information elusive. Related to a former manor house near the Harku lake, named after whichever whim went through its benighted owners’ minds:
- 1798: Cramers Höfchen (‘Cramer’s court’, translated as suvemõis (summer manor), belonging to a customs inspector called Johann Cramer of various misspellings (Cramer, Kraamle, Krameri…)
- Early 1800s: Birkenhof
- 1871: Fick aka Viki which could be one of the various poolmõis (see Mõisa), after, apparently, a pharmacist Eduard Wilhelm Fick
As to its possible allasum (Ward) status or identity, nothing is clear: once pin-pointed in XGis, now it’s putting out ‘loves you’ / ‘loves you not’ signals and I’m not ready to stalk. Pending official update.
Ülemistejärve (0) 
See Ülemiste and Järve. NB: we’re at the end of the dictionary so it should be clear by now. The lake itself is a place-name and thus nominative, Ülemiste Järv, while this is the District of and therefore genitive, and, being a District name, does not seem to even have a nominative (see Nõmme).
Sõjamäe (Sõjamägi) 
Tricky, literally War Hill, its meaning could range from Soldiers’ Knoll, Martial Mountain, Battle Bump, to Bruise. Military vantage point / observation post sounds good too (see Mäe for discussion). Most faithful, however, is Battle Hill, named after what is believed to be the site of a battle following the Jüriöö Ülestõus (St. George’s Night Uprising) of 1343-04-23 where the Teutonic Order killed some 3000 Estonians in an orgy of attrition and revenge (see Lasnamäe). Streets today come in all sizes: Väike-Sõjamäe, Kesk-Sõjamäe and Suur-Sõjamäe, formerly V-, K & S-Weimarschofi after manor house belonging to master butcher Johann Weymar (1815), but native Estonians long preferred the Sõjamäe variants or even, according to TT, in the 18th C, Tapomäe, where Tapo seems to come from tapp:tapa, slaughter or murder. To trivialize the uprising, the German overlords renamed or nicknamed Sõjamäe as Seamäe (Pig Hill), Schweinsberg in German, sometime in the 19th C (and still printed on maps until at least 1924). The name can still be seen on the 1914 map of Tallinn accompanying Baedeker’s Russia, with Teheran, Port Arthur, and Peking; handbook for travellers. Sure, that worked…







