Home
Sitsi (Sits): 
Derived, they say, from Hindi: printed cotton or calico, perhaps सूती (sūtī), which seems to be cotton the finished product (cloth or thread) as opposed to कॉटन (kŏṭana), cotton the raw material. Renamed (1953-1990), along with Kari, as Majakovski V. during the Soviet occupation, many years prior to which, in 1820 at least, these two streets represented the approximate city boundary. One of a textile raw materials street group. See also Kanepi.
Sitska (?)
Former farm or farming family. Street probably renamed after its scion Jaan Sitska, historian, in 1996 from Mähe, and once enticingly known as Kaarel, maatükk 22, 16-a, or, more or less, Charles, piece o’ land 22, 16a, reaffirming the Estonian sense of an address not necessarily being a thoroughfare but a plot of land. Anagram of Kitsas.
Sõbra (Sõber)
Friend. Parallel to Lemmiku. Strange entry where my original version got it completely wrong: [[“Considered by some to be derived from MLG sobbenhunt, young dog. But poss. a Baltic loanword, cf. Rus. собака (sobáka), Lith. šuo, and Latv. suns. Koer on söbber senni kui pead sillitad, a dog is your friend as long as you stroke its head.”]]. The opposite seems to be the case. Word and often-related meaning shared across FU languages, where Votic seems to encapsulate the essence of its footprint: ‘friend, girlfriend; trading partner across the Gulf of Finland’; with Finnish seura (society; company); Veps sõbr (‘association, artel; work done jointly’); and Wiedemann’s 100-year-old Estonian, also sõbr (Freund, Geliebter, Gönner, Kunde, i.e. friend, lover, patron, customer). There may have been earlier loans to or from MLG, Prussian and Lithuanian, but I’m incapable of analysing them. Comments or pointers welcome.
Sõle (Sõlg)
Brooch, pin, ouch (not an onomatopoeic consequence of mishandling, ‘ouch’ is derived from French, nouche, the socket of a precious stone, later the stone itself, by a linguistic process called rebracketing. Rebracketing comes in two flavors: agglutination, familiar to Shakespeare groupies where, for example ‘an uncle’ shifts to ‘a nuncle’, and deglutination, transforming the hypothetical English ‘a norange’ to ‘an orange’ although deriving ultimately from Persian nāranğ via Venetian naranza to Italian narancia and thence arancia through French orange or orenge, although the Spanish route from naranja to French is not to be ruled out). These are the famous, usually silver, but sometimes bronze or copper brooches, ranging from the small buckle-type (vitssõlg), through the ±5-cm almost-closed-horseshoe-shaped fastener (rõngasõlg, reminiscent of Viking-era brooches, although some of these might more aptly be called a Prees) and heart-shaped brooch (südamekujuline sõlg) to the >15‑cm (or up to 35 cm in the Setu area) circular, gently-conical boss (kuhiksõlg) worn by Estonian women on the breast of their traditional dress. In addition to decoration, they also served as security for food purchases in the spring of lean years. Renamed (1968-1990) during the manifestly communist period as Karl Marxi.
