- it was named after the first settler, a beekeeper named Karp;
- the area was once dotted with floodplain lakes teeming with large carp.
In the 16th century, the village of Karpovka was listed among the old state bortnik (forest beekeeping) settlements, whose inhabitants collected honey from wild bees. According to the village inventory compiled in 1588, Karpovka had just 7 inhabited houses.
In the final years of the 16th century, Tsar Boris Godunov granted Karpovka and the surrounding lands to the noble Gordeyev brothers — Vasily, Andrey, and Ortemiy. The new landowners built their homes there, and the village came to be called a selʹtso (a small noble estate village). In 1613, the selʹtso had 3 manorial and 4 peasant households. By the end of the 17th century, Karpovka had grown considerably: 13 households with 60 men in total.
In the 18th century, Karpovka was owned by several landowners, among them the Belavins, a family that produced V. I. Belavin, the organizer of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Decembrist "Union of Welfare."
Karpovka became a selo in the early 18th century, when, by decree of the Nizhny Novgorod Bishop Pitirim — as part of efforts to combat the Old Believer movement spreading throughout the district — a wooden Karpovskaya Church was built. The stone Karpovka church that stands today was erected in 1817.
A reminder of Karpovka's village past survives in the name of Poryadkovaya Street ("ulitsa" being an urban word; in the selo of Karpovka, whose residents worked the land, streets were called "poryadki" in the village fashion). A small fragment of the old Karpovka remains on the opposite side of Novikov-Priboy Street — Balakirev Street and Suzdalskaya Street.