Derzhavin was born nearly nine months after his parents were wed, but the location of his birth remains a point of dispute. Derzhavin considered himself a native of Kazan — which proudly proclaims itself as the city of his birth — but he was possibly born at one of his family's estates in Sokury or Karmachi, in Laishevsky County. The Laishevsky District is informally known as the Derzhavinsky District because of its association with Derzhavin. He was named Gavriil (Russian for Gabriel), as his birth was 10 days before the Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel, celebrated on 13 July in Slavic Orthodoxy. He was a sickly child, and his parents followed the traditional practice of the era and "baked the baby" () — an ancient ceremony in which sickly or premature babies are placed on a bread peel and put in and out of the oven three times.