This article deals with the problem of the semantics of proper names. It is stated that onyms, in addition to lexicographic meanings recorded in toponymic dictionaries, also have psycholinguistic meanings. Lexicographic meanings are traditionally described in dictionaries in accordance with the principle of reductionism, which involves minimizing the features included in the meaning with a limited volume of the dictionary entry. Numerous experiments have allowed us to discover a new kind of meaning, which we call psycholinguistic. Psycholinguistic meaning is a meaning that is actually represented in the linguistic consciousness of native speakers of a particular language. The psycholinguistic meaning is identified and described in accordance with the algorithm developed by us in 5 stages: 1) conducting psycholinguistic experiments 2) constructing associative fields of word-stimuli, which are a set of associative responses to verbal stimuli, ordered in descending order of frequency, obtained during psycholinguistic experiments 3) semantic interpretation of associative fields and identification of semantic components 4) sememic attribution of semes and the formulation of the final psycholinguistic meaning 5) contrastive analysis, it includes a comparison of regional variants of psycholinguistic meanings. In this article, this algorithm is described by analyzing the semantics of the toponym “Voronezh”. The psycholinguistic meaning of the toponym “Voronezh” was revealed as a result of semantic interpretation of the data obtained during psycholinguistic experiments in Voronezh and Grozny. The brightness indices of semantic components and sememes, according to which their field affiliation is determined, are calculated. False semes were detected. A comparative analysis of regional (Voronezh and Grozny) variants of meanings with each other, as well as with the lexicographic meaning of the toponym “Voronezh”, recorded in the dictionary of E. M. Pospelov, is carried out.