 Ordubad is a name of Turco-Persian origin and means ""army town"" (from Turkic ordu (army) and Persian bad (town)), which implies that the city was founded during the period of the Mongol or the ensuing Il-Khanid rule.Hamdallah Mustawfi (1281–1349) mentions Ordubad in the mid-14th century as "a provincial town, one of the five towns making up the "tumān" of Nakhchivan, with fine gardens, and producing good grapes, corn and cotton".French traveller Jean Saint-Martin mentions, in his 1818 book about the geography of Armenia, that the contemporary people referred to the city as "Ordouvar" () or "Ourdovar" () in Armenian, and "Ardoubad" in Turkish and Persian, and that the settlement had already existed in the 14th century.