Names
Vaimu (Vaim)
Spirit, ghost, apparition (also means: mind or mental power, or female farm laborer on corvée duty, the one-time compulsory service on a manor). At first glance, a shortening of ‘holy ghost’, this is not certain; MLG tended to use hillige gēst, etc., for that (see Pühavaimu). Since the earliest records (1694 onwards) give German Spockstraße, it may well be a vestige of Reformation jabs at the Catholic rite (where lengthening the ‘o’ in spȫk was intended to make it sound more foolish?), warping 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 Russo-German travesty of Шпуковская (Shpukovskaya), the German already reminiscent more of spitting (spucken) than spookin’ (spuken), and the townspeople, pitchforks in hand, rejected his counter-proposal of Нечистая (Nechistaya, unholy or dirty), so it ended up as Страшная (Strashnaya, 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.
Väina (Väin)
Strait (as in Dover), sound, pass. Kalevala hero Väinämöinen’s name is sometimes accused of having originated, in part, from this: the modern-day term for old Finnish väinä is suvanto and one of Väinämöinen’s alternative names is Suvantolainen. Since the 700-year-gestated geriatro-fetus was born of a sea nymph, the strait could be an allegory of the female womb and genitalia (see also Salme for another pass and another Kalevine genetrix). On the other hand, given Finland and Estonia’s obsessive history of folklore research and its seeming absence from former Votic, Mordvin, Ingrian, etc. communities, we are probably working from skewed sources anyway. And whether the word either comes from Finnish väinämö for minstrel, or this and the personal forename Väinämö are simply short forms of Väinämöinen, as Väinö also is, I couldn’t say.
