RAHANIMETUS ROBI
ESTONIAN COIN NAME ROBI

Summary/Abstract: The Estonian word robi ‘ancient small coin, penny’ has mainly been used in 17th century religious texts. The word also has an equivalent in Finnish, cf. Finnish ropo ‘small coin, penny; scanty donation’. So far, it has been accepted that the word robi is etymologically related to the Estonian onomatopoetic verb robisema ‘to rustle, to rattle’, Finnish ropista. In the present article, a Russian loan source is suggested, < Russian дробь ‘small shot; fraction (in mathematics); splinters, broken pieces, crumbs’, in older language also ‘(metal) plaques; (small) weight’, cf. also дробить ‘to crush, to break to pieces, to divide up, to split up’, дробный ‘separate, subdivided, split up’. The word robi could belong to the older (15th–17th century) Russian loanwords in Estonian. The same word probably occurs in the compound plant names robirohi, robihein ‘rattle (Rhinanthus)’, in historical dictionaries and in dialects also ‘field pennycress (Thlaspi arvense)’ etc., considering that the naming motive of the plants is the similarity of flat fruits and small coins.

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