Hansu (Hans)
Uncertain. TAAK gives it as the name of a former farm, but not listed as such in KNAB. According to Hamilton’s 3rd Law of Odonymy (see Aedvere) and the street’s year of naming (2004), it should be named after Käsu Hans (?-1715/1734), one of the earlier poets in the Estonian vernacular (writer, in fact, of the first surviving poem by an Estonian in Estonian, Tartu dialect), author of the lament where the town tells its tale of woe, Oh! ma waene Tardo liin (Oh! Poor Tartu town I am) in 1708, written in the middle of the Great Northern War (in the temporal rather than spatial sense, one hopes). Interestingly, despite Tartu then being known by its Germanized name of Dorpat, Hans uses Tardo/Tarto (according to printing[?]), derived from its original Estonian name of Tarbatu. Estonian ‘t’s and ‘d’s are often interchangeable, see Hospidali.