Ainu Morpheme Explorer
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札幌 さっぽろ Sapporo

Sapporo, Ishikari region, Hokkaidō

Ainu spellings: Satporo

One of the major Hokkaidō names, with Ishikari, Shiribeshi, Abashiri, Kushiro, Nemuro, Rumoi, Tokachi, Abuta, Ebetsu, Uryū and Mashike, whose meaning no dictionary-based reading settles. The name was probably given centuries before the dialects that the dictionaries record.

Location

43.0686, 141.3509 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 札幌. Open in OpenStreetMap

Referents

  • settlement The city of Sapporo; in the nineteenth century the Ainu settlements Kami-Sapporo and Shimo-Sapporo
  • river Sapporo River, the older name of the Toyohira River; its former lower course is the Fushiko River (husko-sapporo 'old Sapporo') and its former mouth at Barato was sapporo-putu
  • mountain Sapporo-yama in Edo-period sources; the documents split between Mt. Moiwa and the massif north-west of Lake Shikotsu (Sapporo-dake, Soranuma-dake, Izari-dake, Ko-Izari-yama, Eniwa-dake). Matsuura Takeshirō's Sapporo-dake / Sapporo-nupuri names the source mountain of the Sapporo River, Izari-dake or Ko-Izari-yama

Analyses

sat-poro

サッポロ ‘dry and vast’ received reading
  • sat ‘be dry’
  • poro ‘be big’

Proponent: 永田方正 (Nagata Hōsei)

The received explanation, usually expanded for the public as 'dry land', with the Toyohira alluvial fan as the referent.

Objections

  • sat and poro are both intransitive verbs. Two intransitive verbs side by side with no noun is a shape that hardly occurs among the roughly ten thousand Ainu place names of Hokkaidō. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek2026
Confidence: low

Both parts are dictionary words, so the segmentation is phonologically easy; the grammatical objection to a verb-verb name without a head noun stands unanswered.

zenibako_trek2026 表「既存のサッポロの地名解」Batchelor1905 grammar, end of chapter V: Satporo kotan "the village of much dryness"

sat-poro-pet

サッポロベツ ‘dry big river’ proposed
  • sat ‘be dry’
  • poro ‘be big’
  • pet ‘river’

Proponent: 山田秀三 (Yamada Hidezō)

Adds pet 'river' so that the name has a head noun. Batchelor (1905) is the earlier record of the same form, with a different rationale: the river bed is broad and dries out in summer.

Objections

  • The verb sequence sat-poro remains inside the name. A bracketing sat-[poro-pet] 'dry Poropet', with sat naming a tributary of a main river called Poropet, would be grammatical, yet no river called Poropet exists nearby and Edo-period documents almost never write the name with pet. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek2026
Confidence: low

The pet-final form is rare in the documentary record, which weighs against a river name as the origin.

zenibako_trek2026 表「既存のサッポロの地名解」Batchelor1905 § V "Place Names Considered", s.v. Sapporo: Sat-poro-pet "the river which gets very dry"

sattek-poro

サッテクホロ ‘place that dries up’ proposed

Proponent: 松浦武四郎 (Matsuura Takeshirō)

Tamura (1996) analyses sattek as sat-tek 'dry + a little' with the meaning 'be thin, lose weight (of people and animals)'; the toponymic gloss 'dry up' is the one the table reports for Matsuura.

Confidence: low

Same verb-plus-verb structure as sat-poro, and the final syllable of sattek has to be lost to reach the attested spellings.

zenibako_trek2026 表「既存のサッポロの地名解」田村1996 s.v. sattek [sat-tek 乾く・ちょっと…する] やせている、やせる

sar-poro-pet

サリポロ ‘river where the marsh is wide’ proposed
  • sar ‘reed marsh’
  • poro ‘be big’
  • pet ‘river’

Proponent: 更科源蔵 (Sarashina Genzō)

sar is the landform noun 'reed bed' (Tamura 1996 sar 葦原、ヨシ原), a separate headword from sar 'tail'.

Confidence: low

Requires sar to be read as サッ and the head noun pet to have been dropped in nearly every early record.

zenibako_trek2026 表「既存のサッポロの地名解」田村1996 s.v. sar 葦原、ヨシ原 (a separate headword from sar 尾)

sap-oro-pet

サップオロ ‘river where the water has flowed down’ proposed
  • sap ‘descend (plural)’
  • oro ‘place (possessed form of or)’
  • pet ‘river’

Proponent: 榊原正文

Reads the first element as the dictionary verb sap 'go down (plural)'.

Confidence: low

Shares the segmentation sap + or with the headland analysis below and differs only in what sap is taken to be. By the rule the article states, that the locative noun or takes a noun before it, a reading with the verb sap faces the same objection as sat-poro.

zenibako_trek2026 表「既存のサッポロの地名解」

sat-poro-nupuri

サッポロヌプリ ‘dry big mountain’ proposed

Proponent: J・バチェラー (John Batchelor)

Batchelor lists Sat-poro-pet first and then states that the name 'really comes from Sat-poro-nupuri, i.e. "dry mountain"'.

Confidence: low

A mountain as the referent agrees with the Edo-period usage Sapporo-yama, while the verb sequence sat-poro and the dropped nupuri remain unexplained.

Batchelor1905 § V "Place Names Considered", s.v. Sapporozenibako_trek2026 表「既存のサッポロの地名解」

sat-cep-poro

サチッポポロ ‘much dried fish’ proposed
  • sat ‘be dry’
  • cep ‘fish’
  • poro ‘be big, be many’

Proponent: 林顕三

Confidence: low

The medial cep has no trace in any recorded spelling of the name.

zenibako_trek2026 表「既存のサッポロの地名解」

sap-or

サッポロ ‘the place of the headland’ proposed
  • *sap ‘headland, protruding point’
  • or ‘place of’

Proponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会）

sap is taken as a topographic noun 'headland' that has dropped out of the dictionaries, so that sap-or follows the pattern of the many or-names built on a landform noun. The referent is the foot of Mt. Moiwa, the Yamahana district of Chūō-ku, whose Japanese name 山鼻 is a worn-down 山の端 'end of the mountain'. On this reading the Sapporo River is the river beside that place, and the name spread later to the fan and the city. The author breaks *sap down further as sa-o-p 'the thing that is in front', beside sapa 'head' (also 'cape' in place names) and san 'come out; jutting point', both built on sa 'front, seaward side'.

Variants

  • sap-poro ‘the headland is big’ — Place names ending in the intransitive verb poro occur in Sakhalin and rarely in Hokkaidō; the author holds the form in reserve because it matches the modern spelling most closely.
  • sap-or-o-pet ‘river at the place of the headland’ — Reading for the few documentary spellings with pet.

Evidence

  • parallel place names

    Three conspicuous capes carry the element sap: Nosappu (納沙布) not-sap and Noshappu (野寒布) not-sap 'protruding point of the cape', where sa and sya are the same syllable, and Hakodate-yama, whose foot was Shirisawabe village (尻沢部), written しりさつふ / しりさふ in the Tsugaru Ittōshi and the Genroku gōchō, read sir-sap 'protruding point of the mountain'. Sahoro (佐幌) in Shintoku, written サツホロ on old maps, is read as the same sap-or at the foot of Shintoku-yama, and Shintoku (新得) itself as sir-tuk 'the mountain juts out'.

    • 納沙布岬 not-sap
      • not ‘cape’
      • *sap ‘protruding point’
    • 野寒布岬 not-sap
      • not ‘cape’
      • *sap ‘protruding point’
    • 尻沢部（函館・谷地頭） sir-sap
      • sir ‘mountain, land’
      • *sap ‘protruding point’
    • 佐幌（新得町） sap-or
      • *sap ‘headland’
      • or ‘place of’
    • 新得 sir-tuk
      • sir ‘mountain’
      • tuk ‘jut out, grow’
  • morphological pattern

    or 'place of' after a landform noun makes a place name across Hokkaidō: Nayoro nay-or 'place of the stream', Memuro mem-or 'place of the spring', Shihoro sup-or 'place of the rapids', Nopporo nup-or 'place of the plain', Tōro to-or 'place of the lake', Shoro so-or 'place of the waterfall', Oshoro us-or 'place of the inlet', Moyoro moy-or 'place of the inlet'. A further group has or after an element no dictionary explains: Nemuro nem-or, Hiroo pir-or, Ashoro as-or, and Ayoro, Uyoro and Oyoro near Shiraoi, which suggests that several landform nouns have dropped out of the recorded lexicon.

  • documents

    Edo-period documents call Mt. Moiwa Sapporo-yama from several viewpoints (see the attestations), and the name is almost never written with pet, which fits a landmark name better than a river name.

  • topography

    Mt. Moiwa runs out into the Ishikari plain like a headland and was nicknamed Gunkan-misaki 'battleship cape' by residents. The name Moiwa itself seems once to have denoted Maruyama, where Hokkaidō Shrine now stands. The Ainu name of today's Mt. Moiwa, Enkarusipe inkar-us-pe 'lookout place', marks it as a landmark and a sacred mountain, one of three near Sapporo that received inaw offerings, with Asoiwa and Kamuy-eroki (Mt. Teine).

    • inkar ‘look’
    • us ‘be habitually at’
    • pe ‘thing, place’
  • archaeology

    Sites C54 to C57 near Yamahana are Satsumon-period settlements, and a casi and settlement traces lie across the river on Tenjin-yama. The author reads this as the original Kami-Sapporo settlement, in use before the Sapporo River shifted eastward. According to Bannaguru Ainu tradition the nineteenth-century Kami-Sapporo people had moved from 美登位 in Tōbetsu after a flood in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, so the name outlived the settlement that carried its meaning.

Confidence: low

The analysis is grammatical and agrees with the documentary use of Sapporo-yama for Mt. Moiwa. Its key element, a noun *sap 'headland', has no dictionary attestation; its support is the recurrence of sap in the names of three capes and in Sahoro, and the author's own decomposition sa-o-p. The author states that the true origin remains unknown.

zenibako_trek2026 「サッポロの地名解」以下

Attestations

  • サッポロ／サツホロ document Edo period

    The usual spellings in Edo-period documents. Spellings with pet, サッポロベツ, are fewer than can be counted on one hand.

  • サッホロ山 document 1857 村垣淡路守範正公務日誌
    ヲタルナイ川、この川上は平原至って広く、サッホロ・アッサフ山麓まで見渡し、この辺、在住の場所に申し立て候処や、至極よろしいと見える。

    Muragaki Norimasa, the Hakodate magistrate, viewed the plain from the mouth of the Otarunai River (today's Shin River) and ordered settlement at the foot of Sapporo-yama and Assap-yama. From that viewpoint the only mountain that fits is Mt. Moiwa.

  • サッホロ山 document late Edo to early Meiji 西蝦夷海岸之図（近藤重蔵探検隊）; 蝦夷全地（薮内於莵太郎）; 北海道歴検図 後志州（目賀田帯刀）; 玉蟲左太夫の記録
    サツホロ山、又コトニ山、ハツサフ山等見ユルナリ

    The author identifies Sapporo-yama in these documents with Mt. Moiwa: in the coastal sketch from the Otarunai river mouth the mountain's outline could pass for Eniwa-dake, so the identification rests on sightlines, since from that point only Mt. Moiwa lies to the left of Tarumae-zan; a sketch from central Sapporo puts Sapporo-yama in front of Otasutsu-yama and Hassap-yama (Hyakumatsuzawa-yama); Megata Tatewaki's print from Toyohira labels the large mountain on the left 札幌岳, and its separate Eniwa-dake figure shows that this is a different mountain. Tamamushi Sadayū, lodging at the Toyohira post house, listed Sapporo-yama beside Kotoni-yama and Hassap-yama. The Sapporo Hachiman shrine, forerunner of Hokkaidō Shrine, was assigned to 'イシカリ領字サッポロ山麓', which Matsuura Takeshirō restated as Enkarusipe, and 'サッホロ山麓' was a candidate site for the Nishi-Honganji temple; neither was built there.

  • Satporo kotan dictionary 1905
    Satporo kotan, "the village of much dryness." (Jap. Sapporo).

    Batchelor's example sentences elsewhere in the dictionary also use Satporo for the town (Satporo wano 'from Sapporo', Satporo orun 'to Sapporo').

    Batchelor1905 grammar, end of chapter V
  • Sat-poro-pet dictionary 1905
    Sat-poro-pet. "The river which gets very dry." So called because this river is very broad at places and during the summer months the bed has consequently many dry places in it. But the name really comes from Sat-poro-nupuri, i.e. "dry mountain."
    Batchelor1905 § V "Place Names Considered", s.v. Sapporo

Related names

  • 発寒 はっさむ — Written アッサフ / ハッシャフ in Edo-period documents and never with pet, against the received hacam-pet 'starling river'. The Pekkausi bluff at the foot of Sankaku-yama, site of the casi of the chief Yorotain, is a sharp point in the plain, which the author offers as a possible sap. zenibako_trek2026
  • 月寒 つきさむ — Formerly Tsukisappu; raised by the author as a further candidate sap-name, together with Wassamu (和寒), Assabu (厚沢部), the Wakkatasap River at Kyōgoku and the twin peaks Sawanchisap and Makuwanchisap by Lake Kussharo. zenibako_trek2026

Sources

zenibako_trek2026 Batchelor1905 田村1996