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Paali (Paal)
Nautical term covering a number of related objects: pile, as in deeply-driven foundation pillars, fender (dolphin), mooring-post or bollard, which latter hints at the Est. word’s origin, MLG pāl, pahl, pōl, etc. (stake, long cylindrical piece of wood, etc., > mod. Ger. Poller and Dutch paaltje) ultimately from Lat. pālŭs (post). Given the greater influence on maritime terminology of Dutch, that would seem to be the source of Eng. bollard (word not recorded earlier than 1844, which does not mean ‘not used’) but this is said to derive from ‘bole’ so nothing certain here, it could be a simple coincidence. As to ‘dolphin’ or ‘mooring-post’, the French use the curious term duc d’Albe after Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba (1507-1582), who in 1567 or 68 during the Dutch Revolt is said to have tied rebel Dutch Huguenots to stakes plunged into the foreshore for crabs and tides to finish them off. But another French word for bollard is bitte, which also means ‘dick’, so there’s that. Lastly, Latin’s pālŭs (also giving us its mod. Ital. diminutive for mooring-post palina) has another pronunciation, pălūs (i.e. switch of long and short vowels) and this means marsh or pond, reflected in the old Venetian(?) expression Palo fa palù (loosely translated as ‘poles make swamps’, essentially warning locals of the danger of just planting mooring-posts any old where) and tempting though it may be to see an organic connection between the two resulting in Dutch polder (see Poldri) the word’s immediate etymology is from Middle Dutch polre > pol (drained or diked land) with a ‘d’ thrown in for fun where polre itself was originally a dike or dam and these of course could first have been made from tree trunks or boles, particularly ironic in a country now devoid of trees and often known as Holland, from Old Dutch holtlant (wood-land) with the titilating suggestion that the wood, once trees on the land, became boles ‘creating’ the land (roughly 50% of the Netherlands is polder). So the pālŭs-pălūs connection is not completely, um, outlandish. Caveat lector! New street in the docks, but nobody knows where.
Teeääre (Teeäär)
Street not actually in Tallinn (in Randvere, a Tallinn suburb) but the name’s too good to miss: Teeääre tee: Roadside road, Beside-the-road road! Like most countries, Estonia has its gems. Good examples are the three villages strung out on the road from Tartu to Võru called Karilatsi (herd of children), Ihamaru (storm of lust) and Puskaru (home-made vodka). Sorry to disappoint but Karilatsi probably comes from the names Gerasim or Karl or even karjalane, cowherd, while the 2nd and 3rd are most likely proper names with Aru tacked on. But what about the village in Valgamaa called Litsmetsa, or ‘bitch forest’? Nope, this one too has a less misogynous origin: to start, the second part is uncertain, varying over time from Mattzi (1688), to mötsa (1762) to miti (1922) to modern-day dialect mõtsa, which may all mean mets, or forest, but could just as equally derived from a man’s name, Mats, or something completely different again, and the first part could have indicated ‘wet, silty, compact riverside soil’ or even be derived from Latvian līcis, meaning, among other things, ‘river bend’, or ‘land on a river bend’. It is, after all, only 30-odd km from the Latvian border village of Ape… But all is not lost. In the county of Kanepi (cannabis) – a few km SW of the above-mentioned Puskaru – is the village Soodoma, Sodom, thus named late 19th C, and scattered around the country are a dozen or so places called Junnküla (turdtown, see also Kaasiku) and, until 1977, Hiiumaa had a village called Küla-küla küla, or Village-village village (see also Laiaküla). On the other hand, Teeäär is also an Estonian surname… As is/was, purportedly: Õueaiaäär (which, with a bit of poetic license, could be translated as ‘skirting around the garden’). The story went that, back in the Soviet days, a dashing Estonian travelled the length and breadth of the USSR, seducing ladies with promises of marital bliss then, having divested them of their marketable maritalia, completed the trio by absconding with their savings and jewels. Sadly, reporting the bounder to the police proved impossible, for no-one could spell his name, let alone pronounce it!
Pleekmägi (0)
Lit. Bleach hill. Two names for two locations: Pleekmäe paik (area, place...) and Pleekmägi, which suspiciously look like they refer to the same plot, geo-referenced some 50 m apart. Bleachfields or bleaching-greens were outdoor areas used by textile workers to lay out fabric to bleach in the glorious Estonian sun, a definite improvement on the legacy Roman method of fulling, or treading it in stale urine and letting the ammonia work its magic. Despite the two names, and given the distance between them, the area probably spread SE from Pleekmäe paik just east of Kaasani church at ///knocking.trainer.fancied to Pleekmägi at ///await.blossom.glosses, a good 250 m NW of Liivamäe. Given the lengths involved and time required (1-2 months in the UK, so probably more Estonia), the area was probably quite large and may well have spread further SE, all the more so since the Tallinna Linna Plaan of 1922 seems to show the area south of then Aafrika (see Võistluse) as being a hill, which may have stretched the area even further S or E of Liivamäe. Locations first recorded in the 16th C as Pleekmäe, Bleichberg and up der bleke (Pleekmägi, TT) and Pleekmääl (1723), pleeksmäggi and der Bleichs-Berg (1732), then Blekmaye, and Bleekmay (Pleekmäe paik, KNAB), but precise dating and sequencing is unclear.
