Kose kihelkonna põliste asustusnimede vanus ja päritolu
The age and origins of the indigenous settlement names in Kose parish

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this article is to provide a more detailed survey of the age and origins of the indigenous settlement names in Kose Parish. The place names that already existed before the Great Northern War are considered to be indigenous, and therefore, the names recorded between the 13th and 17th centuries will be examined. The source material comes primarily from the place name archives of the institute of the Estonian Language, for which place names from Kose Parish have been collected from 1929 to 1969. a large percentage of the village names from Kose Parish are very old – a quarter of the village names in the place name archives of the institute of the Estonian Language date back to ancient times and they are already mentioned in the Danish Census Book. Later on, the names of the manors that were established in place of the villages sometimes adopted the names of the ancient villages. By the end of the 17th century, recordings related to 26% of the names had been added, which means that more than half the village and manor names in Kose Parish are indigenous. In the case of the farm names, about 25% of them can be connected to the names that are found in the old sources (a similar result has also been achieved in the research of place names in the neighbouring areas). Of them 4% were indigenous, i.e. farm names that appeared in sources before the 18th century. The main section of the article is comprised of a list of indigenous names, where we can see the oldest spelling of the name and information regarding the probable origins of the name. The definite etymology of the oldest village and manor names can be determined very seldom, but the centuries-old forms of the name can surprisingly often be juxtaposed with old personal names (e.g. Alansi). The most transparent village and manor names are usually based on names related to nature (e.g. Kivioja). Most of the names of ancient farms are based on personal names (e.g. Hansoni). In many cases, this is only an indirect classification, because the names cannot be explained with only one equivalent. In the case of several settlement names that are not transparent today, the most likely point of departure is still a personal name (e.g. ardu). Concurrences have also been discovered with Germanic personal names, and comparisons with Low German and Frisian names have helped to find explanations for place names that are difficult to etymologize. Settlement names have also undergone various specific developments.

• Details
• Contents