One is that it is from name of a Tartar prince Uryup, who got bogged down in a swamp near this location, during a fight with Yermak and got captured.

The film was based on a short story by Mikhail Sholokhov, and Uryupinsk was the place of the action, shown as an inconspicuous provincial town.

Founded in the late 14th–early 15th century as Uryupin, it was a border outpost of the Principality of Ryazan, populated by Don Cossacks.

[10] Since 1857, it is the stanitsa Uryupinskaya and home of Pokrovskaya Fair, a center for trade on the southeastern side of the East European Plain.

[12] According to the alphabetical list of settlements of the Donskoy Army region in 1915: 5,782 men and 6,316 women lived in the village, the land allotment of the village amounted to 25,354 tithes of land, the office of the district ataman, the district zemsky council, the district leader of the nobility, the postal and telegraph office, a real school, a women's gymnasium, a city school, a women's 4th grade a school, two two-class schools, two parish schools, a military craft school, a district hospital, a committee of the Russian Red Cross Society, a fire brigade, a commercial and industrial mutual credit society, the Ust-Medveditsky District Court, investigators of three sites, a notary, a prison and other officials and institutions[13] In 1921, the village was incorporated into the Tsaritsyn province.

The final part of the short story "Fate of a Man" by Mikhail Sholokhov takes place in Uryupinsk.