Vanaküla () is a village in
Lääne-Nigula Parish
Lääne-Nigula Parish () is a rural municipality of Estonia, in Lääne County. It has a population of 7,041 (as of 1 January 2019) and an area of .
Lääne-Nigula Parish was established by merging Oru, Risti, and Taebla parishes after the mu ...
,
Lääne County
Lääne County ( or ''Läänemaa'', literally "Western land"; ; ) is one of the 15 counties of Estonia. It is located in western Estonia and borders the Baltic Sea to the north, Harju County to the north-east, Rapla County to the east, Pärnu Cou ...
, in western
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
Vanaküla was attested in written sources as ''Gammelby'' in 1642 and ''Gam̄alby'' in 1798. Both the old Swedish names and the Estonian name literally mean 'old village'. According to the Swedish linguist , the nearby village of
Riguldi probably consisted of multiple hamlets, including one called ''Gambyn'' (i.e., 'the old part of the village'). In 1604, when the territory of Rugildi was assigned to newly built , the village and the peasants were dispersed, including the hamlet of Gambyn (which had been located in a field called ''Bystället''). However, the peasants were able to take the name of their village with them, and, when they found a new place to settle on the edge of the forest, they reused the name. The fact that today's Swedish name, ''Gambyn'', occurs in the definite form (suffixed with ''-n'') suggests that it is more recent than other nearby Swedish settlement names ending in ''-by'' 'village', such as ''
Enby'', ''
Hosby'', and ''
Österby
Österby is a village in Lääne-Nigula Parish, Lääne County, in western 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 ...
''.
References
Villages in Lääne County
Kreis Wiek
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