In the article, the Chuvash dialectal word măyăx ‘furs, sack’ and the dialectal variants of the Cheremis word čerke ‘church’ are analyzed. The Chuvash word comes from an Old Novg. form [miẹ] < Old Russian /měx/ of the 14th century, the Cheremis dialectal variants are borrowings of an Old Russian north dialectal form *cerky , where the donor form represents an intermediate phase of change cьrky > *cerky > cerkov' .