Vanaküla is a village in
Kuusalu Parish
Kuusalu Parish () is a rural municipality in northern Estonia, the largest in Harju County. After joining with the adjacent Loksa Parish in 2005, the municipality has now a population of 6,863 (as of 1 January 2009) and covers an area of . The po ...
,
Harju County
Harju County ( or ''Harjumaa''), is one of the fifteen counties of Estonia. It is situated in northern Estonia, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, and borders Lääne-Viru County to the east, Järva County to the southeast, Rapla Count ...
in northern
Estonia
Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
.
It lies on the left bank of the
Valgejõgi
Valgejõgi (lit. ''White River'') is a river in Northern Estonia. Its source is in Lake Porkuni in Pandivere (Lääne-Viru County) and it drains into Hara Bay (part of Finnish Gulf) at Loksa (Harju County).
Geography
Valgejõgi lacks any major ...
River.
Name
Vanaküla was attested in written sources as part of the personal name ''Wanaküla Jack'' in 1630–1631 and ''Wannaküll Jaack'' in 1637, referring to the freeholder son of
Kolga Manor, and as ''Wannakül (küla)'' in 1683 and ''WanaKÿla'' in 1699. The name literally means 'old village'. The motivation for the name is unclear. According to
Gustav Vilbaste, Vanaküla was settled in the first half of the 17th century on land that belonged to the village of
Valgejõe, which was destroyed in the wars of the 16th century (and then rebuilt in its current location about to the south). According to
Enn Tarvel, the site was known as ''Witena'' in 1290, which semantically corresponds to the name ''Valgejõe'' (both meaning 'white river'). If this is the case, the name ''Vanaküla'' refers to its location at the old site of the village of Valgejõe.
References
Villages in Harju County
{{Harju-geo-stub