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Lätte (Läte)
Source, spring, fountain. Southern Estonian dialect for ‘well’. Named, like its parallel peer Allika, after a spring in the courtyard of Tatari 24. Both streets claim its ancestor as Quellenstrasse, spring street, but where the other was thus known from 1890 to 1942, this street was only thus recorded once in 1942: in Ein Führer für deutsche Soldaten durch Reval mit Stadtplan, Strassenverzeichnis, 10 Bildern und kleinem deutsch-estnischen Wörterbuch (A guide through Tallinn for German soldiers, with map, street index, 10 photos and short German-Estonian dictionary) by Dr. Friedrich Klau, a book known for its haphazard rendering of local names, which may well have mistaken it for Allika. Renamed (1948?-1991) as Lätte A. during the Soviet occupation.
Leiva (Leib)
Bread. Named, 2014, for the HQ of Leibur at No.1: Estonian bakery first documented in 1762 when its founder Julius Valentin Jaeksch bought a property on the corner of Vaimu and Lai. See also Pagari. From Proto-Germanic *khlaibuz or *χlaiƀa-z, to Mod. Ger. Laib, Eng. loaf, Gothic hlaifs, as well as Russian хлеб and Polish chleb or even, perhaps, Lat. lībum (flat [unleavened?] bread) and lībāre (perform a sacrifice), hence Eng. libation, indicating the huge socio-cultural importance of bread, but beware, tempting though it is to think Pol. sklep (shop) is a metonym of bread (as in saying ‘motor’ for ‘car’, but the other way round), this comes from sklepienie, vault or cellar, then figuratively stall or trade. As such, this highlights the origins of the boden in Raekoja tänav and Dunkri, for more details, see Kinga.
Lõo (Lõo)
Short for Lõoke and Lõokene, see Lõokese, where both the ‑ke and ‑kene endings are diminutives, short and long form respectively. An odd word of Proto-Germanic origin, *laiwarikōn- or, *laiwazikōn-, losing the ‘w’ to give Eng. ‘lark’, Swed. lärkor, Ger. Lerchen, etc., as well as lõo and leevike (see Leevikese) and does not appear to exist as a standalone word anymore. Estonian diminutives are to linguists what “the one that got away” is to anglers, magnifying (or minimizing) with each telling, in which another level of diminution can be tacked onto the previous one recursively, as a form or re-emphasis, and ‘some people’, mentioning no names, suspect that the long-form ‑kene diminutive is nothing less than a ‑ne diminutive of the ‑ke diminutive. Ignoring the yellow polka-dots for the minute (if you’ll excuse the pun), an “itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bikini” (plural in Est., dammit) could, under very strained circumstances, translate as bikiinikesekesekesekesed – (Don’t!) – although they’d probably say pisikesekesekesekesed bikiinid. Or not. WTF…
All-Linn (0) 
Downtown (literally). Formerly known as just lin (also spelled lind, litn, etc.: today meaning town but, back in the day, fortress, citadel, castle too), die Unterstadt or Нижний город (under and lower, i.e. downtown). Less in the cinema, shopping and clubbing sense as the one where poor buggers were stranded outside the fortified upper part of town. The ‘Downstairs’ to the ‘Upstairs’. Particularly undesirable when the medieval equivalent of stag-weekenders descended upon the place (OK, maybe some clubbing then). One of Vanalinn’s 4 main Wards (see also Toompea). But excludes a number of streets which are ‘Wardless’. See Vanalinn.







