Ainu Morpheme Explorer
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Shikabe, Oshima region, Hokkaidō

鹿部

しかべ Shikabe

Four readings were current before the article: the cork tree, the albatross, Batchelor's cart river and Uehara's carrying place. The nineteenth-century maps and journals attach the name to the Orito River, with Ōnuma at its head; the present Shikabe River carries none of those spellings.

Ainu spellings: Sikabet, Sikunotpe, Siknopet

Analyses

sikerpe

シケルペ

received reading

place where Amur cork trees are

Proponent: 鹿部町（町名の由来／鹿部町の概要）

The town's own account: shikerupe means the place where kihada, also called shikoro, grows, a tree valued for inaw, for medicine and for dye, and the name later became Shikabe. It is the reading most often adopted today.

Objections

  • A plant name on its own hardly ever becomes a place name. A name built on this tree would take a shape such as sikerpe-tay 'kihada wood' or sikerpe-us-pet 'river where kihada grows', and names of that shape exist elsewhere. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek2024
zenibako_trek2024 「鹿部の既存の地名解」
Analysis details
Confidence: low

The tree name is a dictionary word; the analysis offers no head noun and no early spelling with r.

Shikabe

シカベ

proposed

albatross

  • Shikabe albatross

Proponent: 『北海道 駅名の起源』

Hokkaidō Ekimei no Kigen states that Ainu shikabe means albatross and that the name was given because albatrosses were numerous. No segmentation is offered.

zenibako_trek2024 「鹿部の既存の地名解」
Analysis details
Confidence: low

Given as a bare word gloss with no parts and no landform.

Shikebe

シケベ

proposed

cart river

  • Shikebe cart river

Proponent: バチェラー (John Batchelor)

Given in Batchelor's account of how Ainu place names are formed, with the local explanation that the river looks as if it were carrying Sunagawa-dake, the volcano towering beside it.

zenibako_trek2024 「鹿部の既存の地名解」
Analysis details
Confidence: low

Reported as a gloss without an Ainu segmentation, so the parts cannot be checked.

sika-un-pe

シカウンペ

proposed

place that carries something on its back

  • sika-un to carry something on the back
  • pe place

Proponent: 上原熊次郎 (Uehara Kumajirō)

Uehara writes in Ezochi Chimeikō narabini Ritei-ki: 'Shikabe: the Ainu word is shikaunpe, rendered as the place that carries. Shikaun is to carry a thing on the back, and be means place. This land carries Uchiura-yama, or Shikahe-yama, on its back, and so the name.' The author restates the idea as sike-p 'the thing that carries a load' or sike-un-pe 'place where there is a load', finds the image of Komagatake being carried an appealing one, and notes that he sees few parallels and that the Orito River, nearer the mountain, would suit it well.

zenibako_trek2024 「鹿部の既存の地名解」
Analysis details
Confidence: low

The reading names a landmark relation the author accepts as vivid; he reports no parallel names of the same shape, and the river it fits is the Orito, which no longer carries the name.

sikno-pet

シㇰノペッ

proposed

river filled with water

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

The name is taken to belong to the Orito River, called Shikunotpe and Shikabetsu in the nineteenth-century records and still called Shukunobe above Ōnuma, and the water it names is Ōnuma, drawn by Megata Tatewaki at the end of the Edo period under the title Shikabe-Ōnuma. On this reading the name was later forgotten on the Orito River, moved to the river mouth, and the small stream by the settlement was newly named the Shikabe River. sikno is given as a derived form of sik in Batchelor's dictionary. Shukunobe is otherwise read supun-ot-pe 'place where dace are'.

Variants

  • sik-nup-pet ‘river of the water-filled plain’ — With nup dropped the form gives sik-pet 'river filled with water', which the author holds changes the sense little and accounts for the spelling Shikabetsu.

Evidence

  • documents

    Matsuura's river map writes Shikabetsu at the Orito River with Ōnuma upstream, his Shokō Ezo Nisshi gives the Shikunotpe River the second name Shikabetsu, and Mamiya's river map names the same river Shikunotpe. The name Orito appears in no Edo-period source and is taken to be a Meiji-period renaming, said to come from Japanese ori-to 'the place where one goes down'.

  • morphological pattern

    If the first element were supun 'dace', the shortening to Shikabetsu would be unexplained, while sik-nup-pet allows the medial nup to drop.

Objections

  • Of the simple reading sik-pet 'river filled with water' the author says that a river is generally full of water, and warns against settling a name on a resemblance of sound alone. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek2024
zenibako_trek2024 「鹿部大沼」Batchelor1905 s.v. Shikno, adj. Full
Analysis details
Confidence: low

sikno and pet are dictionary words in the senses used, and the identification of the Orito River as the original bearer of the name rests on three independent nineteenth-century records. What the name says of the water is broad enough to fit many rivers, which the author states himself.

Attestations

  • シヽヘ / シカヘツ map 19th century 松浦山川図

    The map writes シヽヘ at Shikabe and シカヘツ at the present Orito River, with the large Ōnuma drawn upstream.

  • シユクノツヘ川 / シカベツ document 19th century 初航蝦夷日誌（松浦武四郎）
    川幅七八間、歩行渡り。此の傍に温泉有る由。又川上二里にトメの湯と言うも有ると聞けども行かざれば記さず。また此処をばシカベツとも言えり。
  • シクノッペ map 19th century 間宮河川図

    Mamiya's map likewise names the Orito River below Ōnuma Shikunotpe.

Related names

  • 宿野辺 しゅくのべ — The upper course of the Orito River above Ōnuma. Read supun-ot-pe 'place where dace are'; the author reads it sikno-pet, or sik-nup-pet 'river of the water-filled plain'. zenibako_trek2024

Sources