Aia (Aed)

Fence, enclosure, garden, run. However, as in English where ‘garden’ originally meant that which enclosed it, as in, for example, Latin: hortus gardinus, ‘enclosed garden’, deriving from Proto Indo-European (PIE) *gher- ‘to grasp, to enclose’ (cf. Old English geard ‘enclosure, garden, house’, etc.) ultimately giving rise to Old Church Slavonic gradu*, ‘town, city’ and Russian город (gorod), град (-grad), English girdle and yard, and related to PIE *gherdh- ‘staff, pole’. The same seems to apply in Estonian where the aed originally meant an enclosure made of pickets (cf. Finnish aita, fence). Only Tallinn street name a palindrome in the genitive, but not the nominative. Rare in existing in 3 varieties. For details, see, in reverse alphabetical order: Aia [tänav], Aia [tee] and Aia [käik].

* Given the complications of displaying ‘exotic’ scripts online, here Glagolitic, see, and ideally buy, A Rambling Dictionary of Tallinn Street Names (all author earnings from the book go to the Tallinna Lastehaigla Toetusfond (Tallinn Children’s Hospital Foundation, set up to aid purchase medical equipment), allowing you to contemplate, with wonder I hope, one of humanity's multiple endeavors at reproducing the infinite subtleties of speech in a pathetic 20-odd alphabet. 

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Äia (Äi)

Father-in-law. Along with äio or äiolane (äi:äio in Võru dialect), it also means ‘devil’ and its attendant adjectival consequences: damn, bloody, fuck(ing)... shedding a grim light on Estonian in-law affinities. By the same logic, äiatar, strictly ‘field scabious’ (see Jaanilille), also translates as female devil, as well as, logically, mother-in-law. Curiously, while ‘mother’ in Estonian and Finnish are respectively ema and emä, ‘mom’, ‘mommy’, etc., in Finnish it’s äiti. See Hõimu. Another street fractionally outside Tallinn, in Iru.

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