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Visase (Visane?)
Name of a former farm along whose border the road now runs. But what the name means is obscure. In the coastal region of Kuusalu some 20-50 km east of Tallinn, visane means pus-producing, suppurating or weeping (as in wounds) but one could happily imagine a dynasty of agriculturalists preferring a more client-friendly appellation. And the only other locations with Visase in their names are two very exciting fields in Pärnumaa: Ülem- and Alem-Visase (upper- and lower-Visase). So, we don’t have much to go by. Visa is a Finnish surname and possibly the closest geographically, but no evidence to this effect. The Eesti kohanimeraamat (Estonian placenames dictionary) provides one or two possible origins: Visse, a personal name recorded in 1744 as Wissi, then Wiissi and Vissi, etc., from the southern half of Estonia in the villages of Võnnu (Tartumaa) and Kiidjärv (Põlvamaa); while in Valgjärve (Põlvamaa), some 15 km further west, there was another Vissi, recorded in 1582 and 1601 as Wiesth and Wisse respectively. The suggestion that the latter comes from Polish wiesęcę, an obscure word said to mean ‘notice’ or ‘rumor’, seems unlikely, but it could come from the Livonian name, Vesithe. And while this area, loosely, was one of Old Believer immigration from Russia (see Sikuti), a derivative of Vissarion (Виссарио́н) is tempting but would require a clear post-1666 dating to apply. Without historical dating, there’s a minor multitude of other possible source names: Wiesenau, Wierecke, Wiessle, Wieso, Visela, Vysell, Wizylla, etc... Yet another, for post-17th-C namings, is a derivative of the then increasingly popular French name Louis, generating Luise, hence Lovissa, the diminutive or short form of which is Viisa, although it’s hard to imagine the Sun King ploughing the sod (not that sort) in his pretty little shoes of which he had 5000 pairs, but I digress. My last shot, with no pretensions to exactitude, is a possible offshoot of visa (meaning tough, tenacious, gritty or, in the case of diseases: obstinate, not too far in meaning from our festering sore above, etc.). If anyone offers you a better explanation, I’d take their word for it. All this comes under what I call the Lost Art of Forgetting.
Tähtpea (Tähtpea)
Scabious, gipsy rose, mournful widow, flowers all. One of the teasel family (Dipsacaceae), Scabiosa spp., flowers named for their use in treating scabies and other skin disorders, not to be confused with related genera such as Knautia (see Jaanilille). Only one species native to Estonia, the tui-tähtpea (lit. dove-starhead/startop) Yet another foreign street (from next-door Maardu) that slipped in when no-one was looking. Consider it a lexical marketer’s “bogof!”.
Vaksali (Vaksal)
Railway station. Avenue (etc., see below) known first as Bahnstraße (train st.), Bahnhofstraße (station st.) or Vauxhallstraße until 1882, with later records (1907) giving the Russian name as Вокзальный бульваръ (Vokzal'nyy bul'var, Vokzalny boulevard) which, like its earlier German name, looks like a direct borrowing from Vauxhall in London, but probably arrived via Russian. According to Max Vasmer, etymologist of Russian, Indo-European, Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages, the word Вокза́л (voksal) meaning central railway station today, was first recorded in the Санктпетербургские ведомости (St Petersburg Gazette) of 1777 as Фоксал (foksal), or pleasure garden (such as the Vauxhall Gardens outside Moscow run by theater man Michael Maddox [1747-1822]), and although railways of sorts date back about 2500 years, e.g. the 6th C BCE Diolkos wagonway (Δίολκος, from Greek διά, ‘across’ and ὁλκός, ‘portage’), used for pushing boats across the Corinth isthmus in Greece, they didn’t really come into their own until the 1800s, and in Russia not until 1842. So when Pushkin penned На гуляньях иль в воксалах, “At fêtes and voksals, la la la la...”, in his 1813 ditty To Nathalie, the association is clearly to pleasure gardens too. At some stage then its meaning shifted from pleasure garden to station. In London’s history, Vauxhall was long known for its Pleasure Gardens, operating from about 1660 to 1859, year of publication, need anyone be reminded, of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and no foreign visitor to London could have ignored it. Various apocryphal stories suggest that a) a Russian railway delegation of 1840 and b) Tsar Nick the One in 1844 both pointed at Vauxhall station and mistook its specific name for that of a station in general (although the actual building station known as ‘Vauxhall Bridge Station’ was not opened until 1848, a ‘stop’ known as Vauxhall can be seen in Bradshaw’s Railway Companion of 1841, see also Hobujaama), but this seems highly unlikely. They cannot not have known the word voksal, and may well have visited it too, perhaps even arriving by train at Vauxhall, common enough in those days. Any surprise must have come from the change in social importance of the two places: the gardens were teetering on bankruptcy and railways were definitely on the fast track, so Vauxhall now meant station. Parallel evidence in the shift in meaning comes from the fact that certain Russian stations were also used for concerts, the prime example being the Pavlovsk railroad station concert hall. What does seem odd, however, is what looks like earlier Russian spellings attempting to map something meaningful onto the original, with фок, ‘fore-’, and сал or за́л, place of assembly, or hall, suggesting an ante-room or waiting-room (a good 65 years before the railroad arrived), although вок is related more to voice. As to the origin of the actual name, it is unlikely to derive from the Garden’s original landowner, Jane Fauxe (or Vaux, once wistfully claimed to be the inevitably better half of Guy Fawkes) but predate her, from Faulke’s Hall (Fr. la Sale Faukes) where both ‘hall’ and ‘sale’ were metonyms for castle or ‘seat’, later Foxhall (Samuel Pepys spelled the gardens Fox-hall which better matches the original Фоксал), one-time property of her possible Anglo-Norman ancestor Sir Falkes de Breauté (d.1226) whose first name, rumor has it, was disparagingly derived from French faux, scythe, after the agricultural implement with which he once harvested a person disagreeable to his happiness, but rumor has many things, and a scythe was an effective cutting weapon too. Although it more sensibly derives from the far older Germanic name of Falco from falcon. So we end on an interesting and, yes, rambling, piece of serendipity with a piece of metal at both ends of the linguistic track from cutting cuttings to cutting through cuttings. Vaksali came in multiple flavors: a Soviet occupation renaming (1950-1987) of Nunne (Vaksali tänav) and Väike-Kloostri (Vaksali põik); prior to which another Vaksali tänav in Nõmme was known as Jaama; a district: Vaksalitagune linnajagu (district behind the railway station); and the puiestee permutations mentioned at the top. Vaksal seems to have gone out of fashion in the first quarter of the 20th C, before which numerous Estonian towns and even villages used the term.
Viru tänav (Viru)
Earliest records (1362) give this as Leymstrate, Lemstrate and a variety of permutations all meaning ‘clay street’ (about which, see Kopli), evolving through to modern German Lehmstraße (1907) which, with lehm meaning cow/cattle in Estonian, and this street leading into Suur-Karja, should have led to at least some confusion but, confusingly, didn’t. Spelled wirro wärraw in the 18th C (1732), and called Нарвская ул., Narva road, from 18th C to early 20th C, with interlude as Uus-Viru (1908). The name Viru is, obviously, deep-rooted in the Estonian consciousness. But perhaps not as deeply as that... Virland is mentioned in various Icelandic sagas, Viro is Finnish for Estonia (taken, originally, from the name of North Estonia, see Ugala) and Finnish vireä means alert, brisk, lively, vivacious, hale and hearty, etc., so it may well have originated from self-designation as ‘true/real beings/people’ (as opposed to others) or, going further back, the Finno-Ugric proto word for ‘live’, ‘life’, *elä, (questionably [i.e. quite possibly not] related to Etruscan ala, ‘vital’, ‘lively’), cf. too, Hungarian elev-en, ‘lively’, and Vepsian elo, ‘life’. EES suggests a relation to vire, sharp, gusty wind (which, despite the connection to sharp, i.e. alert, brisk, etc, I find unlikely). Another possiblilty is a loan from one the descendents of PIE *wi-ro- or *wiHrós, man (from *weiə-, vital force), which also gave man in Latin, vir, and thence not only English virile but also were, man, as in werewolf (see Kitzbergi A.), as well as in Lithuanian vyras and Latvian vīrs. EES suggests this for both Viru and Võro with the additional possibility of võõras, foreign, cf. Livonian vȫrõz. Not impossible, and they wouldn’t be the first people to come to be known in that way. Exonyms, or names given one people by another people, are not uncommon: Wales and the Welsh, for example, ultimately derive from Proto-Germanic *Walhaz (for people of the western Roman empire, whether Celtic or Latin) which also led to Cornwall, Walloon, Gaul and Galatian (as well as walnut, or foreign nut, once known in England ca.1300 as noiz ffraunceys, or French nut [in Est. it’s Kreeka pähkel or Greek nut] and, borrowed into Old Church Slavonic as vlachu, to the Romanian Vlachs and Wallachians, and well as Russian Валах (Valah) for Romanians in general. If võõras is a Baltic loanword, perhaps it followed a similar route to English foreign, from PIE roots to something akin to Medieval Latin foranus, on the outside, exterior. With only minor chin-twisting the two words võõras and foranus do sound similar. Another term Estonians use(d) to describe themselves is maarahvas/maamees, or people/men of the land. At the same time, their (remaining) neighboring Vironians, a coastal people, use a similar designation, mõ-mīed, men of the land, to designate Latvians, as distinct from themselves, kalamīed, men of the fish, or fishermen. The two present-day counties of Ida-Viru and Lääne-Viru cover the approximate original homeland of the Vironians.
