Home
Mügri (Mügri)
Water vole, aka tavamügri (common vole) or vesirott (water rat). Shockingly not only never used, but rejected by locals in favor of the glitzy manifestation of Eastern European slavish devotion to Hollywood and the American dream: Mingi… For those interested in this sort of thing, Eng. ‘vole’ (in its full name vole-mouse) comes from Old Norse völlr ‘field’, so ‘field mouse’.
Lai (Lai)
Broad, wide. One of the oldest streets in Tallinn, with a long list of names to prove it. Initially identified after its salient residents, the nuns: susterstrate (1361), vicus monialium or platea (longa/sancti) monialium, loosely translated as “(holy) enclosed nuns’ (long) high street” (1364-1380), then platea sororum (1480). By the 1600s it was Süsterstraße or Schwestergasse and, in the 18th C (1703), the S switched to C, Cisternstraße, a spelling perhaps influenced by the 17th‑C reforms to the Cistercian movement in La Trappe, France. At some stage, however, contemporary records of Cistern- sonst genandt breitstrasse (Sisters’ - otherwise known as broad street) suggest locals must have become aware of the human side of their angelic nature and that, if nothing else, nuns were still broads...
Lahepea (Lahepea)
Over the bight, gulf, cove, inlet (Bight heights?...). After former village on Kopli bay. Nothernmost section the Kõrgepinge bicycle- and foot-path. See Lahe.
