節婦 せっぷ Seppu
Niikappu, Hidaka region, Hokkaidō
Ainu spellings: Sep
The pair Pon-Seppu and Poro-Seppu shows that sep named the ground first and the rivers after.
Location
42.3824, 142.2757 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 節婦. Open in OpenStreetMap
Readings in the place-name tables: セプ Sep
Referents
- settlement Seppu, a small settlement west of the Niikappu town centre, once with a station of the Hidaka main line
- river The Seppu River and the Ō-Seppu River, from Pon-Seppu and Poro-Seppu
Analyses
poro-sep-pet
ポロセㇷ゚ペッ ‘the parent wide river’ received readingProponent: 『北海道 駅名の起源』
Objections
- Where a name comes in a pon and poro pair, sep was not first given to a river: it named some landform of the neighbourhood and passed to the rivers later. The author holds the reading open to reconsideration. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
The parts are dictionary words; the objection is that the name belongs to the ground before the river.
sep
セㇷ゚ ‘the ground under a cliff that comes down close to the shore’ proposed- sep ‘small dale below a cliff’
Proponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会） (zenibako_trek (Otaru Zenibako Place-Name and History Society))
sep is a verb 'be wide', and in place names it is often used as a noun. Besides Seppu there are Maruseppu, Sekineppu (sep-munke-p), Sepomai at Motta and Oniseppu, where it is plainly a noun. Batchelor's dictionary gives the noun sense as a small dale, which the author accepts with the caution that the dictionary's wording should not be taken at face value and that the landform must be observed. What the sep places have in common is a cliff running down almost to the water, leaving just enough room below it for a path or a hut.
The verb sep is a dictionary word and Batchelor gives a noun sense; the sense the reading needs, the ground under a cliff, is the author's refinement of that gloss from the landform of the places he lists.