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Katariina (Katariina)
Catherine. Various species: 1) Saint Catherine, the lady supposedly of 4th‑C Alexandria and martyred on the famous wheel for the benefit of fireworks’ manufacturers; while there is no evidence she even existed, her cult begun in the 9th C and was finally banned by the Holy See in 1969. She gives her name to Katariina Käik next to Katariina Kirik in the old town, voted most photogenic passage in Tallinn (you do know that the Soviets wanted to raze the old town to make way for brave new housing, don’t you?). 2) Catherine I of Russia (1684-1727), second wife of Peter the Great and Empress of Russia from 1725 for Katariina Trepp (steps) next to Peter the Great’s cottage, Peetri majake (maja = house, ‑ke = diminutive, hence cottage) aka Peetri I Maja, now a museum at No.2 Mäekalda (they seemed to like the simple life at times, living in a log cabin in St Petersburg while the city was being built), and probably Katariina Kai (see Pikakari). 3) Catherine the Great (1729-96), empress of Russia from 1762, who does not seem to be much represented in Tallinn (but see Le Coq A. and Mõigu). 4) See Kadri. There may once have been a Katariina tänav (Екатеринская ул.) in Kesklinn somewhere, but records are uncertain.
Kinga (King)
Shoe street. Always has been, although the names more often suggested the maker: strata calcificum (1357), platea sutorum (1364), schohmekerstrate (1405), Schuhmacherstraße (1740) and Schusterstraße (1803) than the object: schostrate (1374), Schohstrate (?), Schuhstraße (1806), and Schuhgasse (1893) Башмачная (Bashmachnaya, pre-16th-C loan from the Golden Horde’s Chagatai Turkic bašmak for sole or shoe) (1872). Clearly, a very pedestrian precinct and, presumably, well-cobbled. Interestingly, the shoe ‘shops’ stretched down the street all the way along the western façade of Raekoja plats, as indicated by Nottbeck’s 1439 indication of Dunkri’s location: klene strate bi den sc(h)oboden alse men geit na dem sternsode (little street by the shoe shops by which you get to the ‘Sternsode’), see Rataskaevu. Boden itself has an interesting etymology: in MLG, bōdem meant bottom, ground (cf. German Fußboden, floor, distantly related to Albanian botë, earth, the world), support, lower surface (as in market stall?), or, likely in parallel, MLG bōde (hut, tent, abode), evolving (16th C?) into shop, usually with living quarters above. At one stage in the later Middle Ages, shoemakers were required to not work from home due to the risk of their substituting good-quality leather by poor, less easy to do in the public eye. Another lead is the 1415 Livonian Order order that fishermen in Kalamaja could build vischer boden (fish stalls?) with turf decks as deep as they wanted but no more than 3 logs above ground, suggesting a cool storage area underground and display level above. As to why the ground surface is uneven today remains to be investigated.
Kooli (Kool)
School. The two contiguous education street-names of Kooli and Gümnaasiumi were fused (1939-1989) under the name Gümnaasiumi ja Kooli during the Soviet occupation, both streets referring to the Gustav Adolfi Gümnaasium, which Kivi lists under its 1972 name of Nikolai Gümnaasium.
Harju (Harju)
Of or corresponding to Harjumaa (county, inhabitants...) in northern Estonia. Earliest records give Harien (1212), Harriæn and Hæriæ (1241) and there may have been no initial ‘h’. No consensus as to original meaning. The word is said to sound like various Finnish, Karelian, Olonets, etc., words for ridge, harja ‘peak; crest of a mountain’, ‘top of a hill or crest of a furrow’ but also and not unhelpfully ‘sandy bank or shoal’, and the overall sense is not far-fetched for a rising land-mass (see Liiva). Wikipedia and a million copy-and-pastes give ‘(Latin: Harria) (1200 hides)’, but I find no record of harria anywhere (bar the odd transcription of arria for area), so probably from Latin area, plot of land for building, etc., which did evolve into the land measurement are (as in one tenth of a hectare), and thus an improbable candidate. Other suggestions include the name deriving from the Hirri, a tribe Pliny the Elder relates second-handedly to have occupied north-central to coastal parts of Estonia (but might his sources have added a pinch of subconscious wildness via Lat. (h)irrire, to snarl or growl?). Question still open. Street first recorded in 1339 as Platea fabrorum, then smedestrate (1362) and smitdestrate (1363), all Smith Street, continuing the tradition through the 16th C with kannengeterstrate (also used for Kullassepa for a while) or tinngeterstrate, both meaning pewterer or tinsmith street, kannen referring more to containers, tinn to the material pewter, an 85-99% tin alloy (tricky word, MLG tinn, tin, tinne, tīn, ten & tēn, given as tin the metal, or objects made from it, or Lötzinn, solder, but clearly an alloy influenced by MLG lōt for plumbweight, see both Loode & Tina, so almost certainly pewter too), while geter, ‘pourer’ or founder, from PIE *ĝheu- also gives us English ‘gut’ and mod. Ger. gießen, to pour (but see Keldrimäe). The subsequent building of fortifications – bastions, ravelins and counterguards – buried the street for a couple of hundred years until the 1700s when cleared and re-opened as harjo ulits (1732), Новая ул. (Novaya, 1767), New Street (see Vabaduse), Кузнечная (Kuznechnaya), oddly, blacksmith / farrier street in the late 19th C then finally Harju in 1885. Harju tänav was the historic street most destroyed during the Soviet bombing of March 9th 1944. Arthur Ransome – author of the Swallows and Amazons children’s stories, husband of Evgenia Shelepina (Евгения Шелепина), Leon Trotsky’s one-time personal secretary and, ironically, buried at St Paul’s Church, Rusland, southern Lake District – stayed at the ‘Kuld Lõwi’ (golden lion) hotel in Harju during his period as British MI6 agent (codename S 76).
