Mykolaiv - Name of City

Name of City

There are several variations of the city's name. In Ukrainian, the city is named Микола́їв, for which the transliteration is Mykolaiv, or officially, Mykolayiv. The Russian name is Никола́ев, which transliterates as Nikolaev or Nikolayev.

During the first year of the construction of the warf at the mouth of the Inhul river, the settlement did not have a definite name. In correspondence between Prince Grigory Potemkin and Mikhail Faleev and other people, the warf was variously called the Ingul Warf, the Warf on the Ingul, the Mouth of the Ingul, and other names. The name Mykolaiv is known from legal order (writ) Number 1065 by Prince Potemkin to Mikhail Faleev on the 27th of August (7 September per the old calendar), 1789.

In 1920 the Nikolaev council decided to rename the city Vernoleninsk, but the new name was not approved by the Government of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in German encyclopedic dictionaries in 1927 and 1932 on the map of European USSR, the city was named Vernoleninsk.

To distinguish Mykolaiv from the much smaller western city of Mykolaiv in Lviv Oblast, the latter is sometimes called “Mykolaiv on Dniester” after the major river it situated on, while the former is located on the Southern Buh, another major river, and may be called “Mykolaiv on Buh” as well.