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Adamsoni A. (Amandus Heinrich Adamson, 1855-1929)
Sculptor, studied in Paris (1887-1891) under Carpeaux, and in Italy. Creator of the Russalka monument using his 17-year-old girlfriend as model. Sculptor of the beautiful Laeva viimne ohe (Ship’s last sigh), and others. Street previously known as Kiriku (1774), Hospidali (1786), Seegi (Almshouse, 1787-1806), for a while Tiigi, followed by Vaeste (the poor, 1881), then, after local complaints at the shame of the name, switched to Falkspargi tänav (Falk park road, 1882) which is far too long to remember for postcards so on it moved to Pargi tee (Park road, 1950) then from 1959 and until further notice: the present name. ‘Russalka’, often translated as ‘mermaid’, was a Russian warship that sank with all hands in 1893, while Slavic rusalka were often young women who died, perhaps violently, before their time – the jilted, pregnant girls or even their drowned infants – living on in the water, and leaving it to lure handsome men to their death. Adamson lived at No. 8 (house no longer there) while working on the Russalka.
Abaja (Abajas)
Cove, creek, inlet, bight, or, according to Saagpakk, pool or quagmire. Being named after the Varsaallika inlet, one may hazard a guess as to which acception is least unlikely. Wiedemann F.J. gives its German as Bachbusen or Meerbusen (stream… or sea…) and since the primary meaning of Busen is bust or bosom, he seems to understand it more as something rounded, like a cove, bay or bight.
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).