Aru 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 ...

Name

Aru was attested in written sources as ''Arroperre'' in 1690, ''Arro'' in 1844 (referring to the farm), and ''Арокюля'' in 1866 (referring to the village). The village is named after its oldest farm, called ''Arupere'': the second part, ''pere'', means 'family, household', and ''aru'' means 'dry meadow/grassland; higher, drier land'. The reference work ''Baltisches historisches Ortslexicon'' (vol. 1, 1985) cites ''Arweculle'' (in 1290) and ''Arrenküll'' (in 1291) as the earliest attestations of the name, but these are not certain.

References

Villages in Harju County Kreis Harrien {{Harju-geo-stub