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Vana-Viru (Vana-Viru)
Old Viru. Previously Alte Lehmstraße / Старая Глиняная ул (Staraya Glinyanaya), old clay street (1889, etc.) and Narvsche Straße / Нарвский выезд (Narvskiy vyyez), Narva road / ‘exit’ / egress or just ‘Road to Narva’ (1889, etc.). ‘Выезд’ – which only occurs once in Estonian street-names – raises an interesting point: as well as for things like ‘away’ matches, it was also used for the side-hustle of decking out a horse and carriage for rent as pin money. Would have been a good place for it, so possible, but don’t quote me. See Viru tänav.
Rüütli (Rüütel)
Knight, cavalier. First recorded in 1423, it seems, as Ridderstrate, with the usual spelling suspects involving single and double ‘t’s, ‘er’s and ‘re’s. Renamed (1950-1987) as Rataskaevu during the Soviet occupation.
Saiakang (0)
White bread passage / vaulted archway. First recorded in 1370 as iuxta forum prout itur ad sanctum Spiritum (next to the market/square, through which you go to the Holy Spirit) then 1430 gang van hilgen gheste to deme markede wart (passage from the Holy Ghost to the market [MLG wart = -wards in Eng.]). Over time, the passageway has run through a number of names reflecting its raison d’être: bread. Russian: Хлѣбный пер. (Khlebny per., bread lane, see Intro for old Rus. spelling), Булочный ряд (Bulochnyy ryad, Bakery row) and Бабий пер., putting various cats among pigeons where Бабий (Babiy) can be ‘just’ a familiar / dismissive term for women or ‘skirt’, or even designate a housewife’s workspace in front of the stove (cf. Härjapea). German: Der Gang (walk / passage) or Weckengang (20th C, Wecken = various types of currant bun), with des heiligen Geistes Gang (Holy Ghost passage) still used mid-19th C. Estonian: earliest name sai kang (1732), later losing its Germanic consonance and renamed Saia käik from 1950-1987. Shoulda kept it, sounds like ‘cake’.
Sauna (Saun)
Bath-house, sauna. Street thus-named since the 15th C at least: bastouenstrate (1419) and (the slightly less Scandinavian- and more MLG-sounding) stovenstrate (1420). Word also means small farm or cottage, but this was long before the shift towards steamier haunts. EES suggests an early German origin for the word, *stakka-, giving English stack as in hay and chimneys, which seems vaguely possible, the ‘t’ could disappear, but ‘k’ to ‘n’? Also, Swedish has its own word for sauna, bastu, from bad, bath, and stuga, small house, related to English stove, from early Germanic stubā and stupā, so although the idea of chimneys and smoke may be tempting, an st- start to the word is probably a red (unsmoked) herring. Another EES possibility is its originating in an early Germanic ‘*sāpna-’ for soap (or *saipôn), originally deriving from a term referring to the red substance warriors colored their hair with (presumably to make them look more ferocious rather than alluring) which also gave the Finnish word for soap saippua, but this seems too remote, and *saipôn is already a cognate of MLG sēpe (see Seebi). What appears to be the safest clue is – other than its Finnish, Livonian, Votic, etc. cognates deriving from early Proto-Finnic *sakńa meaning sauna in the broad sense (see above) – its use in Sami languages: suovdnji, hole dug in the snow (by birds, such as the willow grouse) and suodji, shelter, and historical Karelian soakna for “winter dwelling, a pit dug into snow for temporary shelter”, the commonality being a constructed shelter providing warmth. Case still open.
