From the History of Onomatological Development of Some Topographical Objects of Penza Region

The purpose of the study is to initiate interdisciplinary remote dialogues and polylogues on sense-making and understanding specific geographical names included in the list of cultural and historical antiquities of Penza Region, i.e. “the northern section of the Wild Field, the Upper Sura, the southeastern part of Meschera and the Upper Prikhoprovye.” The purposes of our study, in addition to the above-mentioned ones, are to attract unaccounted data and, based on their evidence, to evaluate both general theoretical reasoning of the author of the work in question and his specific arguments against leveling the potamonym Serdoba to *Serdab “Cold Water”. Materials and methods. The main materials are: M.S. Poluboyarov’s book “The Antiquities of Penza Region in the mirror of toponymics”, historical, historical-etymological and etymological dictionaries, geographical reference books, encyclopedias, Internet resources (Wikipedia, Yandex Search, etc.). The main methods are: generally accepted historical-genetic, comparative-historical, contrastive-comparative, typological, etc. Study results. The article establishes a limited nature of primary sources used and generalized by the author of the book “Antiquities of Penza region …”, insufficiency of reasons for rejecting the existing leveling the potamonym Serdoba to Iranian sardoba “cold water” and dubious leveling of the definition of Serd-: ~oba to the male personal name Sart. Conclusions. The astyonym Serdobsk goes back to the potamonym Serdob<*Serdab “Cold/Cool water”; if it went back to Serdoba, it would sound no different than Serdobinsk (cf. Aktuba>Aktyubinsk, Akhtuba>Akhtuba floodplain, etc.). The potamonym *Serdob in Russian was formed as Serdoba as a result of agreement on the basis of grammatical (feminine) gender with the geographical nomenclature term river and entering into the typological series of derivatives of the type: zhadoba, koldoba, sdoba, stydoba, khudoba, etc.