Estonian Baby Names

Until the 12th century the marshes and forest lands along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea were in the undisturbed possession of a number of non-Christian tribes. The Esths and the Livs in the northern regions (present-day Estonia and Latvia) belonged to the Finnish branch of the Ural-Altaic family, which derives from Central Asia. Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian all share this Asian heritage. Contrary to common belief, Estonian uses the Roman alphabet and not the Cyrillic alphabet. In addition to the standard alphabet, some diacritical marks are used. On letters for certain sounds, these are pronounced similarly to those in German.