Names
Ümera (Ümera)
Another Tallinn street (the last!) that looks like a badly-knotted bootlace. This one is the Estonian name for the river Jumara in present-day Latvia. Here, near Cēsis, aka Wenden, or Võnnu in Estonian (see Vene), the Estonians fought and beat Teutonic Knight invaders during the Livonian Crusade in 1210, described in Metsanurk’s historical novel Ümera jõel (On Ümera River). The name Ümera itself may perhaps be derived from MLG Ümer ah. In the 16th C, final long vowels were indicated by adding an ‘h’ at the end, and my final wild stab in the dark underbelly of Tallinn odonyms is to conclude that it’s fair to assume that the ah meant ‘river’ (cf. Swedish ‘å’, river)... but then again it might not. Caveat lector!
Uneliblika (Uneliblikas)
Large chequered skipper (lit. sleep-butterfly), Heteropterus morpheus (someone in the Tallinn Street Name Commission really likes butterflies). Part of a lepidopteran group. See also Vaksiku.
Unistuse (Unistus)
Dream, daydream. Another word borrowed from Finnish during the 19th-C language reforms.
Unna (Und)
Trimmer, ligger or bank runner, essentially a device allowing the business end of a fishing line to remain dangling in the water for extended periods (e.g. all night for pike, or while you go and cook sausages for ice-fishing). Could be a disk-shaped block of wood that floats, or one too large to pass through the hole in the ice, a spring-action system planted into the snow... Part of a fishing-tackle group, see also Vabe.
Urva (Urb)
Catkin: for want of a better word, a ‘tube-like’ cluster of flowers, usually but not always male, found on various plants: alder, birch, hazel, mulberry, oak, poplar, willow, etc.
Ussilaka (Ussilakk)
Paris, truelove, true-lover’s knot, or herb paris, Paris quadrifolia, from the Latin par:paris, ‘equal’, due to its regular leaves, not the city. Also poisonous, perhaps suggesting its Estonian name: snake’s mane. But uss also means worm; see Ussimäe. One of the Mähe flower-name group, see Aianduse.
