Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale Fire, Ada and other Nabokov works here.
In a conversation at the Faculty Club Professor Pardon (a character in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) tries to pronounce the name Pnin:
Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"
Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla" [sarcastically stressing the "Nova'"].