Many Muscovites know the station "Bitsa" on the Kursk railway, the metro station "Bitsevsky Park", the equestrian sports complex" Bitsa "and"Bitsevsky Forest Park". Residents of Southern Butovo also know Starobitsevskaya Street, named after the former village of Staraya Bitsa. But, I think, few people know that all these names owe their origin to the name of a small river Bitsa (left tributary of the Pakhra), flowing south of the MKAD. At first glance, this name is not Russian, because it cannot be interpreted in modern Russian. Therefore, it was compared with hydronyms of Baltic origin (Abesta-Obista in the Dnieper region, Abista in Lithuania). But let's pay attention to the fact that in the old sources, starting from 1480, the river was called differently-Obytsa. This suggests that the name of the river is still Slavic, containing the prefix o - or ob-. Let us recall the words of an astute researcher: "Toponymy brings us old Russian prefix forms that have long lost their productivity and are now not always clear. For o, about, the most likely recoverable values are "around, on both sides" (Nikonov V. A. Introduction to Toponymy, Moscow, 1965). Indeed, we see in old documents, and in the living speech of osluditsa (cf. sluda "steep river bank"), orelka (cf.rel "shallow; elevated place"). By the way, according to this model (which is no longer felt now), the common Slavic word island is also built, the Proto-Slavic *o-strov, "that which flows around, is bypassed on both sides by a current, a jet." So to our name (in its ancient form of an Inhabitant), the Old Russian obisesti "surround, circumvent" was cited (M. V. Gorbanevsky Experience in compiling a toponymic dictionary of the Moscow region // page 95 Problems of East Slavic toponymy, Moscow, 1979), otok "flow around, bypass of something", whence the name of the Old Rivers, branches of the river (bypassing the island) - Otok, Otochka (Smolitskaya G. P. Names of Moscow streets, Moscow, 1996). Yes, a term with this ... Читать далее