Home
Pühavaimu (Pühavaim)
Holy Spirit, after its nearby church. With a long history of name change: retro ecclesiam sancti spiriti e. capellam (1363) or strate achter dem hilghem gheeste (1389) (both meaning behind the Holy Ghost [church and chapel]) and later variants such as Hiiligöösti ulits (1732), Helliste (1885), etc. Renamed as Iskra for a couple of weeks in 1941, then as Säde during the later Soviet occupation (1948-1987).
Raekoja tänav (Raekoda)
Town hall street. Earliest recorded name was budel or bodel strate (1371). Understood or misunderstood in the 1st edition of the present dictionary as derived from “MLG budel, büdel, modern-day Beutel, or little bag or purse” or “the verb büten, to barter, exchange,” etc., and hence market area. Other sources, however (see Salminen in refs), take it to be from MHG bütel, modern-day Bote (herald) or Diener (servant), meaning bailiff. And, effectively, this is the street in which the bailiff lived. What is interesting is the etymological shift from MHG bütel, cognate with old English bydel, which gave rise to beadle (bedellus in medieval Latin), while bailiff comes from Latin baiulus, porter. The transformation seems to be as follows: the Roman porter carrying bundles evolved into the lictor carrying the fascis, or bundle of rods and axe symbolic of authority (cf. fascist), while a beadle was also a messenger of authority, with various medieval Latin spellings (pedellus, or pi-, be-, bu- or bo-) apparently conflating with baiulus allowing bütel to shift from Pedell-bedel to Büttel-bailiff. On the other hand, 11 years after the first recorded budel / bodel strate naming in 1382, the street was known as platea parva institorum, or little (lesser) street of retailers / hawkers / peddlars (see Kinga for discussion on boden), and bearing in mind that a) Raekoja tänav is a relatively narrow side street to the east of Kullassepa, itself formerly known as vicus institoris (1327), platea institorum (1345) or kremerstrate (1389), and b) what today is Raekoja Plats was what Zobel identified as eesti kaupmeeste-käsitööliste asulaväljak (Estonian merchant-craftsmen quarter) in the late 13th C, all suggesting commerce, it not unreasonable to imagine a similar mutation as beadle to bailiff also occurring in budel to bütel according to the city’s changing fortunes. Either way, by the late 17th C, the name evolved into Bütteley Strasse with the local clink at No.6 called Bütteley too and recorded as bodelye or Fanckhaus (<Swedish / German?) by 1594. Officially, at least... Locals just called it Alevilaut, the village coop (lit. barn, stable, pigsty), to differentiate it from the classier chamber of temporary restraint for wealthier burghers of the junker estate: Junkrukamber. Street also known as Petersilien Gasse (1684-1785) for, rumor has it, the traders who used its cellars to keep their parsley fresh.
Raekoja plats (Raekoda)
Town hall square. Lit. council house, the rae comes from German raten, to advise, as in Rathaus, town- or city-hall. First recorded as forum (1313) then the name oddly disappeared from the records until re-emerging (1732) as suur turro (and variants, Suur turg, etc.: big market) until 1923 when it acquired its present name, with other interludes as Deutscher Markt (German market) and Schwedischer Markt or Шведскій рынокъ (Swedish market, see note on Russian spelling in Intro) to differentiate it from Vene turg (Russian market), present-day Viru väljak, as well as Neuer Markt (new market) to differentiate it from Vana Turg (old market). Until 1816, Raekoja plats was also equipped with miscellaneous devices designed to discourage recalcitrant behavior: pillory, manacles, leg‑ and neck‑irons. Mass entertainment may seem to have come a long way since then, but probably hasn’t... See Vana-Veerenni.
Nunne (Nunn)
Nun. Today’s genitive is Nunna, so this could be an earlier spelling. Named after a one-time nearby nunnery, the Cistercian convent of St. Michael, Püha Miikaeli klooster (see Nunnadetagune torn). Recorded in the Middle Ages as susterstrate (1361) or platea sancti monialium (1364), and later as platea sororum (1480) and Süsterstrasse (1606), the Soviets, perhaps due to its ending up in front of another place of mass congregation, Balti Jaam, christened this and Väike-Kloostri with the slightly more pedestrian denomination of Vaksali (1950-1987).
