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Aaviku (Aavik)
Found on some maps of Tallinn, where it doesn’t exist, but does in nearby Rae. Named after a farm and not, regrettably, after the best known of the Aavik family: Johannes (1880-1973), inventor of numerous language reforms and neologisms (oddly, the ones most people recall, dare we raise the cranial lid on the Estonian subconscious, are relv, weapon, from revolver, and mõrv, murder, from German Mord), as well as translator (although some would say ‘re-writer’) of Maupassant, Edgar Allen Poe, Turgenev, Mika Waltari, and a dab of Sophocles, Apuleius, etc., An all-round linguist with, in addition to the languages implied above, German, Livonian, Mordvin, Swedish, and varying degrees of familiarity with Arabic, plus other Slavic and Finnic languages... Either way, given Estonia’s istory of ‘H’-denial (see Wiedemann’s orthographically nightmarish dictionary Ehstnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch), the name probably derives from haavik anyway (see Haaviku).
Äia (Äi)
Father-in-law. Along with äio or äiolane (äi:äio in Võru dialect), it also means ‘devil’ and its attendant adjectival consequences: damn, bloody, fuck(ing)... shedding a grim light on Estonian in-law affinities. By the same logic, äiatar, strictly ‘field scabious’ (see Jaanilille), also translates as female devil, as well as, logically, mother-in-law. Curiously, while ‘mother’ in Estonian and Finnish are respectively ema and emä, ‘mom’, ‘mommy’, etc., in Finnish it’s äiti. See Hõimu. Another street fractionally outside Tallinn, in Iru.
Kaali (Kaal[ikas])
Name of a field of ten craters on Saaremaa caused by a meteorite landing variously around 1690-1510 BCE (as dated by accelerator mass spectrometry) or, less probably, 7500 BCE (radiocarbon and palynological analyses). As it slowed down in the atmosphere to an impact speed of some 10-20 km/s, it broke into pieces and the largest, comparable to a small atomic bomb, left a hole 110 m in diameter and 22 m deep. Go to ///flunking.refuse.supermarket. Understandably, even its mythology has its own mythology. In fact, the street is named after the swede, turnip, rape or rutabaga, and shouldn’t be here anyway, belonging to the Laagri township (outside Tallinn) fruit an’ veg section along with Tomati, Selleri, et al. Also of interest is that the Saaremaa name of Kaali has nothing to do with root vegetables but comes from the von Gahlen family who owned an estate there from 16th C to 1729. In southern Estonia, Setumaa in particular, kaal:kaali is a headscarf.
Karuvildiku (‘Karuvildik’?)
Not quite sure. Lit. “bear-felt boot” (“bearskin boot”?). Felt, vilt:vildi, from MLG vilt, filt, from PIE *hwel or *hwol is cognate with wool (Norw. ull, Ger. Wolle, whence Est. vill:ville) and which, due to the turning/rubbing/rolling/churning movements in making it, raises questions as to its relation to ‘wheel’ via the root *hwl/hl > *kwel- to revolve or move round, thence *kw(e)-kwl-o- wheel and circle – comments welcome. Given its company, fair to assume it could be (intended as?) the name of a moss, although quite a thorough search found no mention of the name. Closest we get is kännuvildik, the aulacomnium or lover’s moss, Aulacomnium androgynum. Street not actually in Tallinn but 300 m away in neighboring Laagri. See also Käolina.
