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Origins of names:
Adygey: people of the sea, from Abkhazian adi: water
Altay: after the Altay Mountains, originally Turkic Altun: gold, Tagh: mountain
Amurskaya: after the Amur River, from Tungus amor: big river
Arkhangel'sk: named for a convent there, dedicated to the archangel Michael
Astrakhan: from Turkish haci: hajji (pilgrim to Mecca), tarhan: free from taxes
Belgorod: Russian byelo: white, gorod: city
Buryat: Mongol buriad: forest-dwelling people
Chuvash: ethnic name, from Turkic dzhyvash: peaceful
Dagestan: Turkish dag: mountain, Iranian ostan: land (land of mountains)
Ivanovo: named for Tsar Ivan IV of Russia (Ivan the Terrible = Ivan Groznyy)
Kaliningrad: city of (communist leader Mikhail Ivanovich) Kalinin, renamed from Konigsberg in 1946
Kalmyk: after the ethnic name Kalmuk, from Mongolian kalimak: beyond the shore
Kamchatka: named by Semyon Dechnev in 1648 from Russian kamtsatka: a type of patterned cloth
Karelia: possibly from Finnish karja: herds
Khabarovsk: after Zherofey Pavlovich Khabarov, explorer of the area
Kirov: renamed from Vyatka in 1934 on the assassination of Kirov (Sergey Mironovich Kostrikov), communist leader
Komi: ethnic name, from Zyrian komi: men
Krasnodar: Russian krasniy: red, dar: gift, renamed from Yekaterinodar in 1920, as the Red Army displaced the tsars
Krasnoyarsk: shortened from Krasnoyarskiy Ostrov, from Russian krasniy: red, yar: bank, -skiy: adjectival suffix, ostrov: island (island with red clay banks)
Kurgan: Turkic for walled city
Leningrad: renamed in 1924, along with the city, in honor of Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, 1870-1924)
Mari: ethnic name, from Iranian word for men
Mordovia: from the ethnic name Mordvin
Moscow/Moskva: after the Moscow River (Moskva in Russian)
Murmansk: corruption of the Russian adjective for Normans or Norsemen
Nizhniy-Novgorod: Russian for lower Novgorod; Novgorod means new city (called Gorkiy 1932-1992)
North Ossetia: Northern part of Ossetia, from Georgian osi: ethnic name
Novgorod: Russian noviy: new, gorod: city
Omsk: Om (River) + -sk: adjectival suffix
Orenburg: Or (River) + German burg: fort, originally planned as a fort on the Or, but actually built elsewhere
Perm': probably from Finnish pera: back, maa: land (considered back country by the Finns) (called Molotov 1940-1957)
Primor'ye: Russian pri: by, morye: sea (seaside, maritime)
Rostov: after the capital, Rostov-na-Donu (Rostov on the Don), which was originally called Krepost Dmitriya Rostovskovo (fortress of Dmitri of Rostov), after the patron saint of its church, a native of a different city named Rostov
Sakhalin: the Manchus called the island Sakhalin anga hata, the island at the mouth of the Black River (meaning the Amur), simplified to Sakhalin (Black River)
Smolensk: adjectival form of Russian smola: pitch (area was a source of pitch for boats)
Stavropol: Byzantine Greek stavros: cross, polis: city (city of the cross)
Sverdlovsk: after revolutionary hero Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (Yekaterinburg before 1924 and after 1991)
Tatarstan: land of the Tatars (ethnic name used by the Mongols)
Tomsk: Tom (River) + -sk: adjectival suffix
Udmurt: after an ethnic name
Ul'yanovsk: after Lenin (nom de guerre of Vladimir Ilyich Ul'yanov (1870-1924))
Vladimir: after the city, named for its founder, Prince Vladimir Monomakh (1053-1125)
Volgogradskaya: after the city, from Volga (River) + grad: city
Voronezhskaya: after the Voronezh River, from Russian voron: crow
Yakutsk: inhabitants are Yakuts, from Yakut yeko: stranger
Yaroslavl': named for Iaroslav Vladimirovich the Wise, Prince of Kiev
Zabaykalsky: beyond (za) Lake Baikal

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