Ainu Morpheme Explorer
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Northern Kuril Islands

知林古丹島

ちりんこたんとう Chirinkotan

Torii's island names come from his Kuril Ainu informants グリゴリ, ゲラシム and アウエリキ (p. 40).

Ainu spellings: Chirin kotan

Analyses

чириннай + котан

proposed

the place of weak current

Proponent: Пыжьянов, Ф. И. (F. I. Pyzhyanov)

Pyzhyanov's reading; Akulov 2022 instead takes the name as 'very small island', by analogy with the small island Анциферова, and rejects the reading 'settlement swallowed by a mudflow' found on Japanese Wikipedia.

Бражник2024 p. 333, quoting Пыжьянов 1998, с. 178
Analysis details
Confidence: low

чириннай is not a word the record can check, and Torii's informants gave no meaning for Chirin kotan.

Attestations

  • Chirin kotan oral record 1903 鳥居龍藏『千島アイヌ』第二章「千島地名解」

    Torii gives the form without comment.

  • Chirinkotan document 1897 Snow, Notes on the Kuril Islands
    Chirinkotan, lying about 16 miles to the westward of Ekarma, is 2400 feet high, and about 4 miles in circumference; its area one square mile.
    Snow1897 p. 73
  • Чиринкотан document 1947 Проект Картографической комиссии РГО им. Ю. М. Шокальского «Названия географических объектов Курильских островов», 1947
    «Старое айнское название».

    The commission restored the name.

  • Машаучу / Машауч / Чиринкутан document 1725–1788 Козыревский 1725–1730; Миллер 1737; Черный 1769; Лексикон 1788 (as listed in Бражник–Пономарёв 2024)

    The eighteenth-century Russian record calls the island Машаучю десятой (Козыревский 1725), Машауч (1730), Машаутшу десятый (Миллер 1737); Чиринкутан, Круглый appears in Иван Черный's diary of 1769 and Чиринкутан или Чикуркотан in the 1788 lexicon.

Sources