Chamzinka

Chamzinka lies on the Nuya northeast of Saransk, among the fields and woods of the Erzya Mordvin country. Its name derives from the old Mordvin personal name Chaunza or Chamza. The village is associated with settlement in the seventeenth century, and records of 1780 describe it as a community of baptized Mordvin peasants. The surrounding river valleys connected its farms with the settlements around Saransk and Alatyr.