荷菜にな Nina

Biratori, Hidaka region, Hokkaidō

Ainu spellings: Ninar

The terrace at Nina stands above the flood reach of the Saru River, and sites on it show settlement from the Jōmon period onward.

Location

42.5788, 142.1063 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 荷菜. Open in OpenStreetMap

Readings in the place-name tables: ニナ (Nina)

settlement Nina, at the centre of Biratori. The ground there forms a low terrace above the Saru River, safe from its floods; sites show settlement from the Jōmon period, and the Yoshitsune shrine was built there in early modern times

ニナラ ‘terrace’ proposed

Proponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会） (zenibako_trek (Otaru Zenibako Place-Name and History Society))

The received reading takes the name for the flatfish, which the author rejects.

Confidence: low

The article gives the sense of ninar without a dictionary citation; the terrace it names is there.

zenibako_trek… 「荷菜（にな）」

‘Sole fish village’ proposed

Proponent: John Batchelor

Confidence: low

Batchelor's reading and gloss as printed in 1905; the segmentation is his, and several of its elements answer to no dictionary headword.

Batchelor1905 § V "Place Names Considered", s.v. Nina

zenibako_trek… Batchelor1905