Lennuki (Lennuk)

1) Originally, the name of Kalevipoeg’s ship; 2) Airplane, aircraft. Name also given to one of two Russian destroyers (this one, ‘Avtroil’, built, ironically, by Tallinn shipbuilders Bocker and Lange with help from France) hijacked by the British and offered to Estonia in 1919, then flogged to Peruvian Navy in 1933, and scrapped in 1954. See Vambola. Also Soviet occupation renaming (1936-1991) of Mardi.

Pääsukese (Pääsuke[ne])

Swallow, martin. The bird’s ‘original’ name may well have been just pääsu to which an initial diminutive made it pääsuke and a second pääsukene (we await the third.) An odd one, this... Given Estonia’s history of invasion, colonization and occupation, the country has had to struggle to maintain its language, to say the least, but here, as with its lesser variant Väike-Pääsukese, the opposite seems to be happening. Located at the business end of town, near banks and other boomtown beasts, its unpalatable name brought shame to the game of trying to pronounce it and has been effectively wiped off the business record – not a single street-sign to be found –– in favor of its neighbor Maakri. Not one street-sign to be found, and local business addresses are Maakri. Be that as it may, the name comes from Schwalbegasse after 19^th‑C property-owner and cabman, Carl Schwalbe. Schwalbe (Ger.) = pääsuke (Est.) = swallow (Eng.). Breeding in Estonia include:

• Kaldapääsuke, sand martin, Riparia riparia
• Piirpääsuke aka piiritaja, common swift, Apus apus
• Roostepääsuke, red-rumped swallow, Hirundo daurica
• Räästapääsuke, house martin, Delichon urbicum
• and last but certainly not least Suitsupääsuke, barn swallow, H. rustica

The last one is Estonia’s national bird which, shockingly, given the barrel scraped to fill out the Lilleküla bird-name group, does not even have a street named after it! But see Suitsupääsuse.

Maakri (Carl Ludvig Macker [Mecker])

18^th‑C dean of the weavers’ guild. According to TT, the dry-cleaners now at No.23 evolved out of the cleaning and dying company founded by the Macker family in 1820 (Carl Ludvig was first mentioned in 1769), but other sources claim the founders (same year) as Birk, a family having lived in the area since 1625. Street also home to the Jewish Synagogue until the March 9^th 1944 bombing, although probably unfrequented at that time: according to the Eichmann list presented at the Wannsee Conference, Estonia in 1941 was Judenfrei, the only ‘Jew-free’ (also termed Judenrein, or ‘clean of Jews’) ‘German’ country... In 2007, a new synagogue was completed in Karu.