Names
Veerme (Veere)
Name of the former farm on which the street is built. Name could well be a corruption of a ‑vere type name (see Aedvere). Chosen for reasons of local oikonym priority, See also Mäeküla. Also means slide, usually qualified by type as lumeveere, avalanche, or maaveere, landslide. The word laviin is perhaps better known and/or clearer.
Veetorni (Veetorn)
Water-tower, for probably understandable reasons, although the one in question is in Tonismägi. Previously but uncertainly known as Alandi, Alendri, Alendre… No.4 used to be the French Embassy, now in Toom-Kuninga.
Veimeri A.
(Arnold Veimer, 1903-1977)
Communist – oxymoronically – economist. Head of the Stalinist puppet state (1944-1951). Enabled the 1949 ‘March Deportation’ of some 20,000 mainly women, children, infants and babies critical of the regime to Siberia. Awarded “Hero of Socialist Labor” in 1973, Order of Lenin three times, etc. Soviet occupation renaming (1981-1995) of Kivila.
Velikije Luki (Velikije Luki)
Вели́кие Лу́ки, City in Pskov Oblast, Russia (about 150 km SE of Estonia), where the Red Army wiped out a German force of some 7000 in the Battle of Velikiye Luki (1942-3). Also burial place of Matrossovi A.. Literally meaning ‘Great Meanders’ after the meandering Lovat River, but symbolized as longbows on the city’s coat of arms, Estonians ‘interpret’ it, inaccurately but humorously, as ‘Big Onions’ (onion is Лук). Soviet occupation renaming (1979-1995) of Virbi.
Vene (Vene)
Russian. There is a hypothesis that the term Vene shares the same origin as Wend (see Kanuti) and/or Vend (although debated, see also Ümera), as well as Vandal and perhaps even Vote/Votic (see Kingissepa V.), and may once have designated peoples living in or coming from the east (from German-Danish point of view), even including the Finns (The mercurial Menius lists the Vandali, Venedae, Wendi, Veltae as early inhabitants of Livonia in his Syntagma). Similarly, a tribe called Vends is said to have settled near the present-day city of Ventspils on the Venta River in the 11th or 12th C before settling in the Wenden area around 12-16th C. Some say they were the Western Slavic Wends speaking a Slavic language, others that they were related to the Livonians and Votes and spoke a Baltic-Finnic language. Further suggestions include the possibility that Wends of the 8th‑C Slavic migrations were behind the founding of Venice. Far be it for me to say ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. Let’s say a vast open question. The fact that Estonian hasn’t always differentiated V from W doesn’t help matters either. Also an archaic term for a dugout canoe or rowing-boat, usually from aspen with its sides bent out, cf. veneh, boat, in Veps, and vene in Finnish. The Püha Nikolause kirik, known as ecclesia Ruthenorum in 1380, is at No.24. Dating to 1820-1827, the Russian Orthodox church is believed to have been rebuilt over the existing church in 1442. It is named after the Greek/Turkish St Nicholas of Myra, aka Nicholas of Bari, or the Wonderworker (?270-343), patron saint of prostitutes and repentant thieves, brewers and pawnbrokers, sailors, archers and Christmas card manufacturers. This is of course Santa Claus, or Father Christmas. Same patron saint, but not to be confused with the 13-C church in Niguliste, or (because some sites do) with the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Laboratooriumi (built early 14th C?).
Versta (Verst)
Russian distance, just over 1 km. The length of a Rus. верста (originally meaning the ‘turn of a plough’, or furrow and often plot length, see Arbu) varied over time, stabilizing under Peter the Great at 1.067 m. New street name (2008) which looks like an unfinished footpath. Named for the train station known as Seitsmes Verst (7th verst), renamed Nõmme in 1874, it being the distance from Balti Jaam on the Tallinn-Paldiski line.
