Edela (Edel)
South-west, south-western, south-westerly. Also süüdvest among sailors. Estonian is one of those rare languages which still has actual names for ordinal, or intercardinal, directions (NE, SE, SW & NW). Note that Estonian edel = Finnish lounas, and Est. lõuna = Fi. etelä (see table below), and that both Est. & Fi. ‘north’ are cognate with a sense of beneathness (Est. merepõhi, for example, means sea floor) as is also Old Norse (ON) norðr, poss. derived from PIE *ner-, left or below, since that’s where it is when facing the rising sun, and cognate with Sanskrit nārakaḥ, नारक, Eng. beneath and nether, and Gk νέρτερος (nerteros), under, deeper, the nether world, the dead. Similarly, ON west, vestr, etc., comes from a PIE root suggesting behindness, where the sun would be if you face east(ish), while Lithuanian vakar, yesterday, vakaras, evening, and vakarai, west, are all related to Latin vesper and the Greek Hesperides, the nymphs of evening and sunsets, strongly suggesting our IE ancestors’ key direction was east. For more on the oddities of Nordic compass points, see Loode. The interrelation of compass points between various Finnic languages is, shall we say, complicated... See below, for example Liv. idā does not map onto its Est. cognate ida, but kirre, South has 3 conflicting etymons, and Liv. lēņtš ≠ Est. lääs, but edel... And while Ida (east), is equivalent to ON austr – cognate with Lith. aušra, dawn, daybreak, Greek αυγή (auge), sunlight, dawn, and even Vedic Sanskrit uṣā́s, dawn – and related to shining, gold, aurora and rosy-fingered dawn, it later gives us austral, or southern, while the Sami for east is nuorti, probably a loan-word, but suggesting a rotational effect perhaps related to latitude. I think that’s quite enough...
| English | Estonian | Finnish | Livonian | Old Norse |
| N | Põhi | Pohjoinen | Pū’oj | Norðr |
| NE | Kirre | Koillinen | Idā | |
| E | Ida | Itä | Ūomõg | Austr |
| SE | Kagu | Kaakko | Lȭinag? | |
| S | Lõuna | Etelä | Lȭinag? | Suðr |
| SW | Edel | Lounas | Lēņtš | |
| W | Lääs | Länsi | Ve’žgõr | Vestr |
| WNW | Vesikaar | |||
| NW | Loe | Luode | Lūod |
The street used to be in the docks, now in Kivimäe, and pointing – Tallinn toponymie oblige – south-east... See Vesikaare. Interestingly, switches such as these are not restricted to Finnic languages. The Hebrew for winter, חורף (xōref), is cognate with the Arabic for autumn, خريف (xarīf), while the Arabic for winter, شتاء (šitāʾ), is cognate with the Hebrew for autumn, סתיו (stav), which also used to mean winter, but changed at one point.
Ehte (Ehe)
Adornment, ornament, ouch (see Sõle for information), piece of jewellery. Some would say trinket. Appropriately, next door to the above Sõle. Only Tallinn street name a palindrome in the nominative, but not the genitive.
Erika (Erika)
Woman’s first name but, given its then German designation as Erikastrasse (heather street), most likely named after the shrub growing on the drier parts of the ‘Kallamäe Soo’* (Kalamäe marsh) on Eurich’s map, reclaimed in 1898 (see also Angerja), especially given the mention of Feuchte und Heidigste Fiehtriften (damp and heathery cattle pasture or commons) 200 years earlier on a 1698 map of ‘Stadt Räfwal’ (city of Reval, i.e. Tallinn). Called Eerika in 1924, Eeriku in 1921, and Эриковая ул. (Erikovaya ul.) in 1916 (KNAB) but already present on Johann Friedrich Eurich’s survey map of Tallinn (1880-1882). Renamed as Nahhimovi P. during the Soviet occupation (1953-1990).
* The asterisk refers to an error by Aleksander Kivi (1894-1985) who might have misplaced the marsh in Kalamaja instead of Karjamaa and is not a criticism – Karjamaa to Kalamäe to Kalamaja… who hasn’t had glitches like this? – but an opportunity to celebrate the man foundational to Tallinn street-name studies – no computer, Soviet overlords, scattered resources... – for a brilliant job.
Esku (Esku)
Old farm/man’s name. Probably from an early Scandinavian name, Askel, Æskil, Askil, Eskil, Áskæll, Áskell, short forms of ON Ásketill, broken down to mean ‘God’s helmet’ (áss [god], and ketill, [helmet or kettle]). This, in Estonian, became jumalakiiver, prob. from Russian кивер (kiver: shako, itself from the Hungarian for ‘peak’, csákó). Rajandi’s Raamat nimedest (book of names) claims the name has long been used in Estonian coastal areas (probably Swedish). But helmet or kettle?... ON already had a word for helmet (hjálmr). So ‘kettle’ was likely a contemporary or later development as it spread through Scandinavia to mean cauldron, cooking-pot, basin, bowl, boiler (see Katleri), etc. There’s something oddly unquixotic about this! As our hero borrows a barber’s shaving-basin for a helmet, boys will pilfer their mums’ saucepans too, so why then would any self-respecting Norse warrior not nick his missus’ casserole to protect his shoulder-rock, as Norse kennings so poetically describe a head (deadpan humour?). I rest my case.