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Eerikneeme (Eerikneem)
Eric’s Cape (point, headland, foreland) on Aegna island, site of one of Estonia’s approximately 9 stone labyrinths (rough location ///slamming.grape.sinister) built by Swedish settlers from the early medieval ages to the 1700s, and known variously as Town of Troy, City or Ruins of Jerusalem, Mount Jerusalem, Virgin’s Dance or Giant’s Garden. Interestingly, its axis of symmetry is NW-SE, with its ‘entrance’ at the NW (see Loode)... Labyrinths of this nature seem to have been first recorded by Karl Ernst von Baer (see Tammsaare A.H.), one in the Kola peninsula village of Поно́й (Ponoy, derived from ‘Sami’ [dialect unspecified] pienneoi, dog river [see Piksepeni]), which a local claimed to be called Вавилонъ (Babylon). Others have been located in Boughton, UK (the outline of a labyrinth can be detected in aerial photos), Visby (Sweden), on the 30-odd-m² Russian islet Острова Виргины (Ostrova Virginy) / Länsi-Viiri (///obverse.underinsured.imposes, very small, may need to zoom in or out to see), on Hiiumaa, etc., and seem to have accompanied the ‘Viking’ migrations but, sensu Baer, may have Finnish or Russian origins. One of the island’s six roads. See also Kalavälja.
Bremeni käik (Bremen)
Bremen, former Hanseatic town in NW Germany. Known as Бремени проход (Bremeni prokhod, or passage) in Russian). There seems to be no record of this alleyway being named until the city’s 1996 wide-ranging decision to either name unnamed locations – including Katariina käik, Kai and others – or eradicate and rename signs of the city’s former involuntary Sovietization, for example: Vabastajate väljak (Liberators’ Square) replaced by Tõnismäe haljak; Pioneeride väljak (Pioneers’ Square) by Politseiaed; and Komsomoli väljak (Komsomol Square) by Uue Maailma haljak.
Brookusplats (0)
Brookus square. Latinized name of Brockhusen, name associated with ownership of various properties in the northern end of Tallinn old-town (Pikk, Lai, Laboratooriumi...). Various candidates: Kivi suggests an 18th-C alderman Volmar Brockhusen which matches the earliest recorded use of the name for nearby Olevimägi – der Brocks-Berg and its old-style Estonian spelling of prooks mäggi – in 1732, but while Tallinn archives have a testament of another Volmar Brockhusen dating back to 1548, the KNAB has no relevant records for the 200 years following the previous local naming of nearby Sulevimägi, de Iseren Dore, i.e. 1529-1732. Either way, the name has a long and somewhat mongrel pedigree. First, given the spelling variations in the records (e.g. Bruckhusen, Brůckhusen & Bruckkusen) and the actual place name, it could apply to a variety of local landowners. In Nottbeck, for example, a transcription of early records rife with erratic spelling, the names Johannes Brüker and Johannis Bruckhusen are both mentioned for 1383, and the same Brüker (?) was written Broker, Bruker and Brůker between 1376-86. The earliest record seems to be 1319 for Ludolph Brogere and his son Nicolaus. Without allowing my neck to go full-turtle, it is possible that the name of the locale reflects a family rather than a specific person, but without clearer records, hard to say.
