THE NAME PODILLYA (Поділля) consists of two parts— prefix - Pо- (- По- ), which means “over,” and root - dil-/ - dol- (- діл- / - дол- ), which means “dale”— forming a word, “overthe-dale,” that in the plural also refers to “the land of valleys” and has designated the region since the middle of the fourteenth century. In the primary sources written in the Ruthenian language of that time, the name of the region is usually used together with the word “land”: Подольскои земли (1375), Подольскои земли (1391), Подолскои з(е)мли (1401), or simple оу Подольи (1429). Latin sources used a loan translation from the Ruthenian language, terra Podolie (1395), while German sources used Podolien (1375, 1385).

Trying to explain the etymology of the word, linguists and historians have limited themselves to emphasizing that the name indicated the territory located on the Dniester River, downstream of Halych, one of the capital cities; it explains dol/ dil (дол/ діл) in the root of the word. To strengthen this theory, they have used the previous name of the region, Ponyzzya, which consists of the prefix - po- (- по- ) and the root - nyz- (- низ- ), which is the synonym of dol/ dil (дол/ діл). The name “Ponyzzya” is mentioned several times in the Galician– Volhynian Chronicle during the thirteenth century. It was recorded for the first time under the year 1228 in the context of negotiations between two princes, Danylo Romanovych (Daniel of Galicia) and Mstyslav Mstyslavovych, when the latter promised to give Ponyzzya to the former. Then the region was mentioned under the year 1240, when the Mongols seized Kyiv, and Dobroslav Sudych conquered Bakota and “accepted whole Ponyzzya without duke's permit.”

In general, all mentions of Ponyzzya in the chronicle pertain to Bakota, the main city of the region. This marking allows us to assert that thirteenth-century Ponyzzya is not identical to Podillya in the second half of the fourteenth century, which stretched beyond Bakota for hundreds of kilometres eastwards. Yaroslav Dashkevych is right in stating that the name “Podillya” derives from the large number of dales filled with rivers in the Dniester River basin, and consequently means “the land/ state of dales.”