Novikov is a very common Russian family name, but it is much more rare among Jews. The family name appears among Jewish families that come originally from Belorussia. At 1806 according to the Russian Czar order, Jews were ordered to leave the vilages. When the banished families moved to the neighbor shtetles, they were called after the names of the villages in which they lived before. It appears that Novikov families were from the vilage "Noviki". There were a number of villages with this name in the Mogilev and Witebsk gubernia of Belorussia. When Jews were ordered to adopt family names, people from "Noviki" took the name that people already used to call them - Novik, Novikov, Novikovsky.