Perm is a land in the upper reaches of rivers

The study serves as a follow-up to the article that provided a historiographical review of the debate surrounding the etymology of the toponym Perm. About 40 geographical objects with Permian names found on the territory of Finland and 13 regions of the Russian Federation were involved in the historical-geographical research. Various kinds of “back lands” (Perm) are evenly distributed throughout the studied territory, and parallel searches for “front lands” did not yield results, which forces us to question the version of a drifting toponym. At the same time, an abundance of Permian hydronyms is recorded, although this should seem paradoxical, because Perm is the “back land”. The use of historical-geographical methods made it possible to clarify the etiology (origin) of the names of the Permian series, which should be understood not just as the back ground, but the land on the river bottoms, in the upper reaches of rivers, in areas of concentration of overland sections of waterways. Portages of varying intensity of use are recorded in the vicinity of 30 “perm”, in 19 cases it was not possible to detect portages. Exceptions to the rule are fixed in the southeastern periphery of the studied area, in villages and villages named Permyaki and Perminov, which are nominated by origin or by the surname of the first settlers. In ancient times, the most important transit and transport interchanges were carefully fixed on the ground by Perm toponyms and hydronyms, which is why the areas of concentration of the most important transport routes (Perm and Permtsa) attracted special attention of the Novgorod and later Moscow authorities as nodes of strength in the colonized territory.