Names
Sõle (Sõlg)
Brooch, pin, ouch (not an onomatopoeic consequence of mishandling, ‘ouch’ is derived from French, nouche, the socket of a precious stone, later the stone itself, by a linguistic process called rebracketing. Rebracketing comes in two flavors: agglutination, familiar to Shakespeare groupies where, for example ‘an uncle’ shifts to ‘a nuncle’, and deglutination, transforming the hypothetical English ‘a norange’ to ‘an orange’ although deriving ultimately from Persian nāranğ via Venetian naranza to Italian narancia and thence arancia through French orange or orenge, although the Spanish route from naranja to French is not to be ruled out). These are the famous, usually silver, but sometimes bronze or copper brooches, ranging from the small buckle-type (vitssõlg), through the ±5-cm almost-closed-horseshoe-shaped fastener (rõngasõlg, reminiscent of Viking-era brooches, although some of these might more aptly be called a Prees) and heart-shaped brooch (südamekujuline sõlg) to the >15‑cm (or up to 35 cm in the Setu area) circular, gently-conical boss (kuhiksõlg) worn by Estonian women on the breast of their traditional dress. In addition to decoration, they also served as security for food purchases in the spring of lean years. Renamed (1968-1990) during the manifestly communist period as Karl Marxi.
Sõlme (Sõlm)
Knot, loop hub. Crossing Puu, one would hope it’s not not a knot of the arboreal persuasion nor not, despite being formerly Köiepõik (after local rope workshops), a nautical knot neither. But no, named for the railway ‘hub’ connecting Hiiu and Nõmme-Väike, aka Nõmme-Kindlus, stations on Peter the Great’s Naval Fortress (see Vabaduse puiestee).
Sõmera (Sõmer)
Coarse sand, grain or granule, gravelly, shingly, gritty, the latter two not to be confused. Street named in 1931, two years after Saue, its peer, had been renamed.
Sompa (Sompa)
Named after a farm that used to be there. Perhaps related to the adverb sompa, foggy, dark or gloomy, or somp for muddy pool and/or possible shortening of an original soonpää (head/end of the marsh), with an old genitive ‑n ending but origins lost in the mists of time...
Sõnajala (Sõnajalg)
Fern (lit. word-leg or ‑foot). Oddly, Estonian does not differentiate foot from leg (both jalg) or hand from arm (both käsi). Then again, English seems unable to distinguish the stomach (part of the digestive tube) from the abdomen. Hungarian – Estonian’s, er, German cousin – however, tends to scind kéz, hand, from kar, arm, but, like a well brought up language, keeps its legs together: láb = leg and foot. If it really wants to be nice, it says lábfej, literally the ‘head of the leg’, for foot. It seems that Bulgarian and Polish have similar situations for leg, so it may not be an FU thing. And, as the very old (sorry) joke goes: “Doctor, Doctor, my feet smell and my nose is running. Am I upside down?”
Soo (Soo)
Swamp, march, bog. Two streets called Soo: 1) the old one, in Nõmme, now known as Alliksoo; and 2) the current one, in Kalamaja, named for its proximity to Kalamäe Soo (see Erika), and formerly occupying parts of both Uus-Kalamaja and Tööstuse, hence its colorful past ranging from Koppelscher Weg or Коппельская дорога and Ziegelskoppelscher Weg (1774, see Kopli), Sumpfstraße (1877) and Болотная (Bolotnaya, 1907), both ‘marsh’, then Große Fischermay-Straße (see Kalamaja) and finally Nikonovi J. (1951-1991) during the Soviet occupation. The fact that Soo ‘starts’ in Kalamaja probably caused Kivi’s notion that Kalamäe Soo was located there too, see Angerja.
