Väike Rannavärav (0)

Small/Lesser/Lower Coastal gate. First known as Veike Ranna värav (1885), followed by Kleine Strandpforte (1907) then Väike-Rannavärava tn (since they now call it a värav, gate, instead of a tänav, street, the dash disappears) until 1987. Oddly, no medieval street/road names are recorded. Southernmost of the two ‘Coastal gates’ (if there were only 2 of them, shouldn’t it be ‘southernmore’?) See Suur Rannavärav.

Väike-Kloostri (Väike-Klooster)

[Small, Lesser, Lower] Abbey, cloister, monastery, convent. Renamed (1950-1987), oddly, since it doesn’t lead there, along with Nunne (1950-1987), as Vaksali during the Soviet occupation.

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.

• All-linn
• Religion
• Mistranslation