千島列島
ちしまれっとう Kuril Islands Kuril IslandsAinu spellings: Chup'ka, Chup-ka, Rūton, Yawan
The Ainu names are directional: Torii's informants placed themselves in the west (Rūton), Kamchatka in the east (Chup'ka) and the islands from Urup down to Hokkaidō in the south (Yawan), while the 蝦夷アイヌ's name for the whole northern chain was the same word for east.
Referents
- region The chain of islands from Kamchatka to Hokkaidō; Russian Курильские острова
Analyses
Курить
‘the smoking islands’ proposed- курить ‘to smoke (Russian)’
Proponent: 鳥居龍藏 (Torii Ryūzō)
Torii reports the Russian derivation of Курильские from Курить 'to smoke', for the volcanoes the Cossacks first saw from Kamchatka, and accepts it.
Objections
- Note 354 of the 1949 edition: the name comes from the people, called куши by the Kamchadal and курилы by the Russians; in the Kuril Ainu language кур or куру is 'man' (after Л. Шренк 1883). Berg holds В. К. Вишневский wrong for deriving the name, in his note to the 1818 edition (vol. 1, p. 140) on the authority of Головнин 1816, from the smoking (курящиеся) volcanoes of the islands. — Л. С. Берг Krasheninniko…
A folk derivation within Russian, current since Golovnin 1816; the 1949 edition of Krasheninnikov (note 354, Л. С. Берг) calls Krasheninnikov's derivation from the people's name entirely correct.
kur (кур, куру)
クㇽ ‘the people’ proposed- kur ‘person’
Proponent: Крашенинников, С. П. (Stepan Krasheninnikov)
Krasheninnikov derives the name from the inhabitants of the islands nearest Kamchatka, куши to the Kamchadal and курилы to the Russians; Berg's note adds Kuril Ainu кур, куру 'man'.
kur 'person' is a common Ainu word and the ethnonym is attested from the first Russian contact; the Kamchadal form куши stands between the two.
Attestations
- Chup'ka oral record 1903 鳥居龍藏『千島アイヌ』第二章「千島地名解」
The Japanese name 千島 is a later one; in the 天明・寛政 years the Japanese used the 蝦夷アイヌ's チユプカ, Ainu 東 'east', the place of sunrise (pp. 35–36).
鳥居1903 p. 35 - Rūton / Chup'ka / Yawan oral record 1903 鳥居龍藏『千島アイヌ』第二章「千島地名解」
The northern Kuril people's own divisions in daily use: their own land Rūton 'west', Kamchatka Chup'ka 'east', and everything from Urup south to Hokkaidō Yawan; they call themselves Ruton-mon-guru 'the people living in the west'.
鳥居1903 p. 38 - куши / курилы document 1755 Крашенинников, Описание земли Камчатки, ч. I, гл. 9 «О Курильских островах»
Звание их произошло от жителей ближайших островов к Камчатке, которые от тамошних народов куши, а от россиан курилами называются.
Krasheninniko… 1949 ed., p. 165 - Курильские острова document 1947 Проект Картографической комиссии РГО им. Ю. М. Шокальского «Названия географических объектов Курильских островов», 1947
Идея возрождения айнских названий Курильских островов принадлежала Льву Семеновичу Бергу.
The book credits Л. С. Берг with the principle, adopted in 1947, of keeping the Ainu names of the large islands, in several cases as the Cossacks first wrote them.
Бражник2024 p. 293