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Peoleo (Peoleo)
Oriole (Oriolus oriolus) a bright yellow (male) or drabber greenish (female) migratory bird, in Estonia from mid-May to mid-August, as reflected in its older Ger. name Pfingstvogel (Pentecost bird) for its usually arriving in May. Its Eng. name is said to come from either its serendipitously similarly-sounding song ‘or-iii-ole’ or from its color called aureolus (golden) until Thomas Aquinas’s one-time teacher, the polymath Aristotelian Albertus Magnus, decided that oriolus was good enough. And so it is. It’s Estonian name is uncertain, probably a rhyming duplication of peo, poss. from Pidu or peo:peo (hand, palm), but given is multiple synonyms ranging from piho (old spelling), through tepoteo, kikuviu, peebupiu (all prob. just onomatopœa), kräunuja kull (hawk that goes ‘kräun’?), hommikumaa täht (star of the east) to kuuseööbik (spruce nightingale), probably just because it’s a cute name for a cute bird.
Pauna (Paun)
Bag, pouch, knapsack, or something pouch-shaped. New street planned (2019) in Haabersti opposite Põllumäe south of Tiskre. Stiff competition for the name, beating, käär:kääru (turn, curve or bend, or bounded loop of land or water), look:looke (shaft bow, the decorative arch connecting the two shafts or thills [see Aisa] of a horse-drawn cart, but Looga already used) and silmus:silmuse (loop knot, noose or hempen collar). Given the meanders of the Tiskre river, all three were acceptable, but no... Then again, paun in N. Estonian dialect also means a marshy river lough, so. See also Kriibi.
Paberi (Paber)
Paper, after the paper factory whose chimney can stlll be seen adjoining Stockmann on Liivalaia. Street (and factory?) seems to have existed between 1950 and 1974. Prior to this, known first as Clasingstraße (1893), through Klasingi on the Pharus map, to Klaasingi, but details lacking.
Paali (Paal)
Nautical term covering a number of related objects: pile, as in deeply-driven foundation pillars, fender (dolphin), mooring-post or bollard, which latter hints at the Est. word’s origin, MLG pāl, pahl, pōl, etc. (stake, long cylindrical piece of wood, etc., > mod. Ger. Poller and Dutch paaltje) ultimately from Lat. pālŭs (post). Given the greater influence on maritime terminology of Dutch, that would seem to be the source of Eng. bollard (word not recorded earlier than 1844, which does not mean ‘not used’) but this is said to derive from ‘bole’ so nothing certain here, it could be a simple coincidence. As to ‘dolphin’ or ‘mooring-post’, the French use the curious term duc d’Albe after Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba (1507-1582), who in 1567 or 68 during the Dutch Revolt is said to have tied rebel Dutch Huguenots to stakes plunged into the foreshore for crabs and tides to finish them off. But another French word for bollard is bitte, which also means ‘dick’, so there’s that. Lastly, Latin’s pālŭs (also giving us its mod. Ital. diminutive for mooring-post palina) has another pronunciation, pălūs (i.e. switch of long and short vowels) and this means marsh or pond, reflected in the old Venetian(?) expression Palo fa palù (loosely translated as ‘poles make swamps’, essentially warning locals of the danger of just planting mooring-posts any old where) and tempting though it may be to see an organic connection between the two resulting in Dutch polder (see Poldri) the word’s immediate etymology is from Middle Dutch polre > pol (drained or diked land) with a ‘d’ thrown in for fun where polre itself was originally a dike or dam and these of course could first have been made from tree trunks or boles, particularly ironic in a country now devoid of trees and often known as Holland, from Old Dutch holtlant (wood-land) with the titilating suggestion that the wood, once trees on the land, became boles ‘creating’ the land (roughly 50% of the Netherlands is polder). So the pālŭs-pălūs connection is not completely, um, outlandish. Caveat lector! New street in the docks, but nobody knows where.
