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Saue (Sau)
Fine clay, appropriately parallel to Telliskivi, also the name of a town SW of Tallinn. Originally named Lau or Lao, with Lau not as in laupäev (Saturday), a Scandinavian (or MLG) borrowing of uncertain origin implying washing-day (Old Swedish, lögh, bath or bathwater; Old Icelandic, laug, washing-water; MLG lōge, logge, loige, etc., Mod. Eng. lye, the ash extract used for washing, possibly related to Fr. lie [wine dregs] from Old Irish lige meaning ‘layer’ where all these terms share a sense of residual sediment), but after local landowner; and Lao either a simple misspelling or perhaps a name morphing into one more functionally related (see, e.g., Liivalao, geographically far removed but indicating a possible progression in name abbreviation).
Seedri (Seeder)
Cedar, Cedrus spp. Any in Estonia are introduced. Began life (1925) as Turgenevi / Тургеневская but, like his first love, crush crushed by another type of seeder.
Seene (Seen)
Mushroom. Known until 1922 as Pavlovi after, sincerely, we hope, the Pavlov (Ива́н Пе́трович Па́влов, 1849-1936).
Seli (?) 
Named after a nearby farm, although the origin of the name is as obscure as the actual avenue (puiestee) itself which looks more like a footpath that gives up before it gets there. One red herring is the Seli Mõis 45 km south of Tallinn recorded to have belonged to Pirita convent in 1474 (the MLG for German Seele [soul] was sēle which, other than morphing into English ‘silly’, is as tempting as it’s misleading...). Given expressions such as selili for ‘on one’s back’ or selildi for ‘back to back’, placenames like Selimägi aka Seljamäe küla (hillslope village) are clearly related to Selja, and Seli derives from either this or seljandik (range of hills). Soviet occupation renaming (1982-1994) as Jüriöö.







