星置 ほしおき Hoshioki
Teine-ku, Sapporo, and Hoshino, Otaru, Ishikari and Shiribeshi regions, Hokkaidō
Ainu spellings: Soushipokke, So-us-pok-ke
Every reading proposed for the name turns on the same choice: a waterfall or a cliff as the thing the settlement lay below. Matsuura Takeshirō's report of a proper name Soushihoki meaning two waterfalls, and the Hoshibokke still written on a 1928 village map, are the two records that bear on it most directly.
Location
43.1324, 141.2109 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 星置. Open in OpenStreetMap
Readings in the place-name tables: ペシポキ Pes-poki
Referents
- settlement The Hoshioki district of Teine-ku, Sapporo. In the Meiji period the name covered a single settlement between Zenibako and Karukawa, later split for administrative purposes into Yamaguchi-Hoshioki, Shimoteine-Hoshioki and Zenibako-Hoshioki; the last was renamed Hoshino in 1943.
- river The Hoshioki River, called Otarunai River in early Meiji maps. It has been the boundary between the Ishikari and Otarunai districts, and later between Sapporo and Otaru.
- waterfall The falls on the upper Hoshioki River: Hoshioki-no-taki and Otome-no-taki. A third, Kanayama-no-taki, was found only recently.
Analyses
so-pok
ソーポク ‘below the waterfall’ received reading- so ‘waterfall’
- pok ‘below, the foot of’
Proponent: 永田方正 (Nagata Hōsei)
The river sign on the Hoshioki River carries this reading beside the cliff reading. The author notes that Nagata, working in the Meiji period, cannot have read Matsuura's Saikō Ishikari nisshi, so the agreement with Matsuura's Soushihoki comes from a second line of transmission.
so 'waterfall' and pok 'below' are both in the Saru dialect dictionary and the falls are on the river, so the reading is sound as far as it goes; it accounts for neither the medial -us- nor the final syllable of the local Hoshibokke.
pesh-poki
ペシポキ ‘below the cliff’ proposed- pesh ‘cliff’
- poki ‘below it’
Proponent: 山田秀三 (Yamada Hidezō)
The river sign on the Hoshioki River gives this reading beside the waterfall reading. In the Saru dialect dictionary pes is the slope of the raised ground above the sand beach.
The Saru dialect dictionary carries pes as a noun for the slope above the beach and poki as the possessed form of pok, and the shape is grammatical. The postpositional adverb pes 'downstream' is a separate entry. The reading passes over Matsuura's report that the name was Soushihoki and meant two waterfalls.
pes-pok-i
ペシポキ ‘the one below the cliff’ proposed- pes ‘cliff’
- pok ‘below’
- i ‘the one, the place’
Proponent: 榊原正文
The same cliff reading with a formal noun added.
Objections
The grammatical objection to i after a noun applies here and the proponent has not answered it.
pon-so-poki
ポショポキ ‘below the small waterfall’ proposedProponent: 浜田隆史
The waterfall reading with pon 'small' prefixed.
Every part is a dictionary word and Matsuura does call the two falls small. The reading has to lose a whole syllable of pon to reach the recorded Hoshihoki.
ooho-suwoppo-kes
ホォソォポケ ‘the foot of the deep box’ proposedProponent: 『銭函郷土史 第一巻』
ooho, suwop and kes are all in the Saru dialect dictionary, and 'the foot of the deep box' names no feature of the place that the source identifies.
so-us-pok-ke
ソウシポッケ ‘the place below where the falls are’ proposedProponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会） (zenibako_trek (Otaru Zenibako Place-Name and History Society))
Built on Matsuura's Soushihoki. Matsuura glossed hoki as 'to line up'; on this reading so is 'waterfall', us 'be there in numbers', pok 'below' and ke 'place'. The author had earlier written the form as so-us-pok-i and replaced the final formal noun i with ke, since i attaches to verbs and pok is a noun. The place name Hoshibokke recorded into the early Shōwa period supplies the final syllable, and Hoshioki is the worn-down form of it.
Evidence
- documents
The 1928 land map of Zenibako village writes 字ホシホッケ and 字ホシボーケ beside 字星置 for the same ground, so the ke was still in local use.
- topography
Two falls stand on the upper Hoshioki River, Hoshioki-no-taki and Otome-no-taki; the third, Kanayama-no-taki, was found recently and is unlikely to be among Matsuura's two. us 'be there in numbers' points to more than one fall in any case.
- documents
Nagata Hōsei's so-pok reaches nearly the same reading from an independent line of transmission.
The segmentation is grammatical and the reading accounts for the local Hoshibokke, the two falls Matsuura reports and Nagata's independent so-pok. so 'waterfall' and pok 'below' are in the Saru dialect dictionary; ke is a bound relational, absent from the dictionary's headwords. The reading rests on Matsuura's Soushihoki being the older shape of a name otherwise recorded as Hoshihoki.
Attestations
- ホシホキ／ソウシホキ document Edo period 巳手控
ホシホキはヲタルナイに落る也。本名ソウシホキと云り。滝二ツ有と云義。
Matsuura Takeshirō gives Soushihoki as the proper name and 'there are two falls' as its meaning.
zenibako_trek… - ホシホキ／ソウシホキ document Edo period 再篙石狩日誌
ホシホキと云よし。この川をもて領境とするよし。水末はヲタルナイ川に落るとかや。本名ソウシホキのよし。ソウは滝の事、ホキは並ぶと云事。此水源に小滝二ツ有と。
Matsuura glosses so as 'waterfall' and hoki as 'to line up', and reports two small falls at the headwaters.
zenibako_trek… - ホシボッケ／ホシホッケ／ホシボーケ map 1928 銭函村土地連絡図
The 1928 land map of Zenibako village uses 字星置, 字ホシホッケ and 字ホシボーケ side by side around the present Hoshino district.
zenibako_trek… - タキ map 1873 札幌郡西部図
The 1873 map marks a waterfall in small characters on the river it calls Otarunai, today's Hoshioki River, so the falls were known from the beginning of the colonial period.
zenibako_trek…
Related names
- 星野 ほしの — The Otaru side of the old Hoshioki settlement, called Zenibako-Hoshioki until 1943, when it was renamed to keep the element 星 while distinguishing it from the neighbouring Hoshioki. The origin of the second element is not established; in the same year Wauji became Haruka, Jūmantsubo became Katsuraoka and Yamanoue became Miharashi. zenibako_trek…
- 星観 ほしみ — The name of a JR station and of a green belt on the Sapporo side of the Hoshioki River, taken from the Seikan Bridge nearby. No address of that name exists. The station name is written in hiragana. zenibako_trek…
- 稲穂 いなほ — The eastern part of Hoshioki, named for the success of rice growing there. zenibako_trek…