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Pallasti (Pallast)
Ballast. Known as Ballasti until 1939, but genuine Estonian names do not (or should not) start with a B, D or G. Ballast comes in two main types: ship and rail. Historically, it was the heavy material, usually rock, that empty cargo ships loaded for stability on return trips then dumped near port on arrival. This was one of the sources of crushed granite or quartzite that engineers used for the combination of grip and give provided by its rough, irregular fracture lines to stabilize railway beds, hence the name ‘track ballast’. One of a rock-based neighborhood. See Sikupilli.
Paldiski (?)
Town, port, and former Soviet nuclear submarine training center close to Tallinn, once entirely fenced off with barbed wire. Originally a Swedish settlement (many in Estonia at one time) called Rågervik (see below), the Russians adopted it as deep sea port and naval base in the 18th century, renaming it Балтийский Порт (Baltiyskiy, i.e. Baltic, Port) in 1762, which Estonians pronounced as Paldiski (see Pallasti and Hospidali), its official name since 1933. The original Swedish name, Estonianized to Rogerwiek, is probably derived from the nearby Suur- and Väike-Pakri islands’ earlier names of Stora Rågö and Lilla Rågö (multiple spellings), possibly (probably?) meaning (greater or smaller) rye island. Interestingly, where Estonians “couldn’t” pronounce German ‘b’, 16th-C Germans had a similar issue with French, also pronouncing ‘p’ instead of ‘b’. In Geoffroy Tory’s ground-breaking 1529 book Champfleury on the new art of typography, he said that instead of “Vela vne bien belle & bonne beste” (voilà une bien belle & bonne bête: now that’s a nice, good-looking animal), Germans said “Vela vne pien pelle & ponne peste” (peste, unfortunately, meaning ‘plague’).
Palderjani (Palderjan)
Valerian, garden valerian, garden heliotrope, Valeriana officinalis. Its other English name, ‘all-heal’, reflects its use as medicinal plant as mild sedative and anti-insomniac. Smell attracts cats. So did my mother, so what? One of the Mähe flower-name group, see also Pojengi.
