社台 しゃだい Shadai
Shadai, Shiraoi, Iburi region, Hokkaidō
Ainu spellings: Sattay, Satay
Both readings take the second element as tay 'wood'. They differ in the first element and in where the name belongs: the coastal ground, or the plateau in the upper valley.
Location
42.5788, 141.4174 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 社台. Open in OpenStreetMap
Readings in the place-name tables: サタイペッ Sa-tay-pet
Referents
- settlement Shadai in Shiraoi, near the boundary with Tomakomai, with Shadai station on the Muroran main line
- river The Shadai River, whose upper course carries the Shadai and Inkura falls and, above them, the plateau called the Shadai tableland
Analyses
sa-tay-pet
シャタイベツ ‘river of the wood in front’ received readingProponent: 定説
Objections
- sa is a locative noun and cannot stand before another noun without a transitive verb between them; 'the river in front of the wood' would take a shape such as tay-sa-un-pet. The old records write Shadai without pet throughout, and the author holds that appending pet to every name is a habit of the place-name literature. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
The parts are dictionary words; the sequence sa before a noun is the grammatical point at issue, and pet is absent from the records.
sat-tay
シャタイ ‘wood spread wide’ proposedProponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会） (zenibako_trek (Otaru Zenibako Place-Name and History Society))
sat is ordinarily 'dry'; the author states that a further sense 'looking as if spread out over a surface' is attested, used of such things as a sky full of stars, and reads the name with that sense. The referent is the plateau above the Shadai and Inkura falls, which is almost level and forms a distinctive landform. Local Ainu explained the name as given for the great falls, which the author takes as further support for the upper valley being the named place.
tay is a dictionary word in the sense used and the reading matches the recorded spelling without an added pet. The sense of sat the analysis needs is reported by the author without a source given in the article.
Attestations
- シャダイ document Edo period
The old records give Shadai throughout, with no example carrying pet.
zenibako_trek…