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Aegna asum (Aegna) 
Island and Sub-district off the coast of Tallinn. Known as Wulf or Wulfö to the Germans, Аэгна or Вульфъ to the Russians (transliterating into Aegna or Vulf, see note on Russian spelling in intro), and Ulffö (unusual with two f’s) to the Swedes. Thus known as far back as 13th C: Wolvesöö (1348), Wolffz Öön (1698), Wulli saar (1724), etc., but mutating to Eikisari (1683) with corresponding switch from wolf to horse, eik being a dialect Swedish (western coastal Estonian) word for horse, cognate with and probably derived from Latin equus, and how it got from one to the other is curious to say the least... Perhaps influenced by other coastal mainland Swedish and Finnish Swedish dialects where the word ranged through heik, ek, ök and ög to öj, could there have been a mishearing / misunderstanding with Swedish ö, island, due to various indigenous and migrant speakers pronouncing it differently? Or simply preferring the more welcoming appellation of horse over wolf? Either way, the name took off, thru Äigna (17th C) Agnasaar (1724) and thence to its present name. Aegna is considered part of Tallinn, but be careful when crossing the road. Part of an Estonian island group, see Kihnu. See also Aegna.
Ahju (Ahi)
Stove, oven, kiln. For those interested in trivia: one of the two >3‑letter street names whose letters are in alphabetical order (see Hiiu). Started life simply enough in German as Töpfergasse (1882), potter’s street, apparently after a local craftsman called Floss, then Estonia stepped in with only four of its six main possible spelling permutations – Pottisseppa, Pottiseppa, Pottisepa and Potissepa (all 1885) missing out not only the most sensible, Potisepa, but also the most accurate, Pottsepa, and why compound words involving sepp (smith) do not usually involve a genitive in the first place I don’t know (see Kullassepa, Rätsepa & Sepa*) – then the Russians either translating it nearly correctly as Гончарный пер. (1892, pottery lane, пер. = abbreviation of переу́лок) or incorrectly as Печная ул., Kiln (prob.) street (1884). Either way, given the humungous alternative of An der alten Wasserleitung (1881) or am Stadt-Wassercanal (1882) from the water supply prolonging that of Veerenni, a four-letter word was probably in order, and an anagram of Jahu it became.
* Although perhaps they do, see Nõmme.
Aedvere (Aedvere)
Aed, as anyone who actually read the introduction will remember, means garden (but see Aia below), while the ‑vere suffix occurring in some 700 place-names (as well as hidden / embedded in others) deserves an entry of its own (but won’t get it). Estonian linguists have been discussing its meaning for about a hundred years and are still not certain. Various suggestions have been made for its derivation: Gothic: fera and Old High German: fiara (region, area); Finnish: verho (covering), vero (verosta in place of), vuori, vaara (hill); Estonian: vare (ruin), veri (blood), pere (family, household, farm), kõrve (forest), veer:veere (brink, border, edge, slope), *vēri (deciduous forest; note for non-linguists, the asterisk indicates a hypothetical form), *veere:*veerde (?), *veri:*veren (wood, woody hill). Not easy. An interesting angle comes from the taxation list compiled for Danish King Valdemar II in 1220-1241, Liber Census Daniae (LCD): the settlement name Serueueræ, for example, clearly looks like a Latinized name. Given the LCD was written in Latin and “probably based on the notes of Danish priests” (www.estonica.org), we have two weak links (Danish clerks hearing Estonian names and their re-transcription into possibly faulty dog Latin). Perhaps the ‑ueræ suffix is the result of fortuitous convergence between conceiving a Latin suffix *‑ver from *vergo, *‑ěre, meaning to be turned towards, to incline or lean, and veere meaning about the same, where the two weak links may have prevented hearing a less obvious ‘Estonian’ genitive. Either way, Estonian linguist Valdek Pall concludes that “the spreading of the ‑vere names was connected with slash-and-burn agriculture”, Paul Alvre proposes a relation to vierre (burnt-over clearing for cultivation), and place-name specialist Marja Kallasmaa also hypothesizes that both veer:veere and *veere:*veerde were slash-and-burn terms. In Saami, similarly, roavvi means a “place in which a forest fire has occurred”. Interestingly, however, in Mordvin place names, N. V. Kazaeva differentiates veŕe (upper) from alo (lower). To conclude, with no certainty, my personal suggestion is that, since swiddeners were unlikely to build homes on top of the swidden itself, but nearby, -vere may possibly have meant ‘by or beside a swidden’. Ten years down the road, it will be interesting to see how embarrassingly wrong I may be... Given its belonging to a land-clearing street-name group (see Alemaa), I suspect they’re trying to give it this more ‘ancient’ meaning*.
* According to Hamilton’s 3rd Law of Odonymy‡, the more recent the naming (here 2001), the more “olde worlde” the name.
‡ An odonym (from Greek ὁδός, road, path, way + ὄνομα, name) is a name given a street. Odonymy is thus a branch of onomastics (the study of names and their origins).
