Chapter 164Ainu Loans and Place Names in Japanese

164.1 Borrowed words and proposed etymologies

Japanese vocabulary includes words identified as Ainu loans. Bugaeva lists Japanese rakko ‘sea otter’ and shishamo ‘smelt’, the latter compared with Ainu susam. Her proposed connection of Japanese sake/shake ‘salmon’ with Ainu sak-ipe is explicitly uncertain Bugaeva (2012: 498, §15.5). These examples have different evidential status even when they appear together in a loanword list.

A borrowing analysis must identify the compared forms and meanings, account for their sound relationship, and establish a plausible direction of transmission. Later changes within Japanese need to be distinguished from the form originally borrowed. Deep historical proposals are discussed separately in Chapter 166 (Distant Comparison and Early Contact).

164.2 Place names as linguistic records

Ainu-derived place names preserve evidence beyond the localities with recorded Ainu speech. Nakagawa reviews earlier research on northern Honshu, including Yamada's distributional arguments, while distinguishing place-name evidence from actual language records Nakagawa (2024: 77; 87, §2.2). The density of plausible names can support a historical hypothesis; it does not supply a complete grammar of an otherwise unrecorded regional variety.

The recurrent elements pet and nay concern waterways, but their meaning cannot be reduced to a universal large-river/small-stream contrast. Tamura's Saru dictionary notes that, in the Saru, Mukawa, and Monbetsu region, even a small principal river can be pet, while a large tributary can be nay. The latter can also refer to a linear depression or streambed Tamura (1996: s.vv. pet, nay).

Knowing an element's meaning is only part of a particular name's analysis. Its recorded spellings, local geography, and historical explanations must also be examined. A modern Japanese spelling cannot by itself establish all the sound changes that produced it.

164.3 Two documented local explanations

Sapporo's account of Nopporo reports an earlier name ヌポロペツ, analyzed as ヌプ・オル・オ・ペッ, ‘river in the field’. The city presents this as an explanation of the name, using qualified wording Sapporo City (2021: 厚別3). It is a documented local interpretation rather than an analysis derived afresh from the modern spelling.

Niikappu's local-history account separates a naming legend from commentary on the word. The legend concerns an official's misunderstood question; the commentary identifies ニカプ with elm bark, especially that of Manchurian elm. The naming event belongs to the legend; the lexical explanation is the author’s commentary Niikappu Town (2024: 7, 第73話「新冠の地名について（伝説と歴史）」).

164.4 A reconstructed plant-name history

Ochiai compares Ainu sikerpe with Japanese regional tree names. Ochiai’s proposed sequence runs through *siw kor pe, *si kor pe, and *si ker pe, with Japanese *sikorope borrowed at an earlier stage. The asterisks identify reconstructed forms Ochiai (2026: 191–196, §§4–5).

Ochiai explicitly qualifies the taste-based derivation and treats modern sikerpe as an opaque lexical unit. Ochiai also discusses an objection to the proposed assimilation across a morpheme boundary. The account therefore offers a historical explanation for evaluation, without making the modern word a transparent compound that independently proves borrowing direction Ochiai (2026: 194–195, §§4.4–4.5, note 54). The further Japanese forms belong to subsequent proposed reanalysis within Japanese Ochiai (2026: 196, §5).