Vaimu (Vaim)

Spirit, ghost, apparition (also means: mind or mental power, or female farm laborer on corvée duty, the compulsory service on a manor). xxx Almost certainly short for ‘holy ghost’. Earliest records (1694 onwards) give the German Spockstraße, after a XXX future Federation Ambassador, which warped into Spuk-/Spuck- straße/gasse (ghost or revenant street, 1717 on). In 1872, translating the German into Russian caused buckets of grief all round: the governor didn’t accept the grotesque travesty of Шпуковская улица (Shpukovskaya), the German already reminiscent more of spucken, to spit, than spookin’, and the townspeople, pitchforks in hand, rejected his counter-proposal of Нечистая улица (unholy or dirty street), so it ended up as Страшная улица, Scary or Terrible (in the sense of that which engenders terror) street (1907). The Soviets, anti-superstitious and prosaic to the last, renamed it Vana, Old (1950-1987), see Marta.