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Otsa G.
(Georg Ots, 1920-1975)
Estonian baritone, beautiful, smooth voice. Born in Petrograd, son of Kaarel Ots, another renowned tenor. Best known for his title role in Rubinstein’s The Demon. And a pretty good swimmer too, winning national championships and breaking records such as the 1939 1500-m freestyle at Nõmme swimming-pool in 23:38:8 mins. The lucky lad has a taxi rank named after him too.
Laikmaa A.
(Ants Laikmaa, 1866-1942)
Painter (known as Hans Laipman until 1935. Estonians have a history of chronic name-changing (see Kassi). Bringer of impressionism to Estonia, one-time lover and perhaps best-known portraitist of the German-educated Marie Under he convinced to start translating/writing her poetry into/in Estonian.
Lätte (Läte)
Source, spring, fountain. Southern Estonian dialect for ‘well’. Named, like its parallel peer Allika, after a spring in the courtyard of Tatari 24. Both streets claim its ancestor as Quellenstrasse, spring street, but where the other was thus known from 1890 to 1942, this street was only thus recorded once in 1942: in Ein Führer für deutsche Soldaten durch Reval mit Stadtplan, Strassenverzeichnis, 10 Bildern und kleinem deutsch-estnischen Wörterbuch (A guide through Tallinn for German soldiers, with map, street index, 10 photos and short German-Estonian dictionary) by Dr. Friedrich Klau, a book known for its haphazard rendering of local names, which may well have mistaken it for Allika. Renamed (1948?-1991) as Lätte A. during the Soviet occupation.
Liivalaia (Liivalai)
Sandflats, lit sandy expanse, avenue, channel... Named after local sand flats, see Liiva. Nice muddle this one: Renamed (1944-1992?) as Kingissepa V. during the Soviet occupation (at one stage of its evolutionary mutation from Kingissepa V. to Liivalaia and/or back again it apparently become misprinted as V. Liivalaia), along with, interestingly, two other streets which shared the name but not the longevity (1974-1990): Jõe and Pronksi, with Liivalaia itself replacing (1974-1990) the German-sounding Juhkentali. This is perhaps the street with the most ‘picturesque’ history, with spellings ranging through its current to Liiva laia, Laia-Liiva and Lai-Liiva (1885); names including Kaasani (Große or Breite or Neue Kasansche Straße in the early 19th C), and a variety of variants around ‘width’ and ‘sand’ in all three standard-for-19th‑C languages. Curiously, its name in 1813 was Suur-Kaasani or Große Kasansche Straße which, from a spoken point of view, is not that far from Sand Straße... It seems that (one of?) Tallinn’s main execution site(s), the Kivivõllaste paik (lit. place of the stone-built gallows) was located at No.8 (see Vana-Lõuna, Hariduse and Roosikrantsi), or nearby. See Vana-Veerenni.
