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Kevade (Kevad)
Spring (season). Also title of first volume of classic Estonian film trilogy – Kevade, Suvi & Sügis (with English subtitles), based on novels of the same name by Oskar Luts (1887-1953). He also wrote a fourth, Talve, which was not filmed. Note the first title, with an ‘e’?... It seems to be an alternative nominative found more poetic than its dull everyday form. Luts was a pharmacist and, while waiting for customers, wrote Kevade based on his own experiences at school. Several rejection letters later, he published it privately in 1912. It became a best-seller, was regularly reprinted, and translated into over 12 languages. Christmas, some say, wouldn’t be Christmas without it (or his Nukitsamees, or Bumpy, a children’s play about a little imp adapted from folk tales). See also Suve.
Koidu (Koit)
Dawn, aurora. Part of the dawn and dusk triad. See Ao.
Gildi (Gild)
Guild. Renamed (1950-1990) as Kolhoosi during the Soviet occupation. Petty but consistent.
Imanta (Imanta)
Apparently an erroneous transcription of Ymaut (Latvian), or Himmot or Himotu (Livonian), the soldier who killed the newly-appointed bishop of Ikšķile (ikškilā meaning ‘one village’ [or, possibly, ‘village No.1’] in Livonian [cf. German, Üxküll or Uexküll] in present-day Latvia), Cistercian Bishop Berthold of Hanover, on his bolting horse during the Livonian Crusade in 1198. Name of Estonian choral society founded in Riga, 1880.
