梅川 うめかわ Umekawa
Yoichi, Shiribeshi region, Hokkaidō
The Umekawa flowed into the Nutchi until the river works cut it through to the sea. No Ainu name for it survives in the Edo-period record, and the three readings that exist differ over whether the name is Ainu at all.
Location
43.2036, 140.7544 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on 梅川. Open in OpenStreetMap
Referents
- river The Umekawa, once the largest tributary of the Nutchi system and now led straight to the sea by river works. Its source is on Yunai-dake; the Tōgeshita, its own tributary, runs under the Umekawa tunnel on the Deashihira pass.
- settlement Umekawa-chō in Yoichi.
Analyses
una-nay
ウナナイ ‘ash river’ proposed- una ‘ash’
- nay ‘stream’
Proponent: 豊丘町の郷土史
Objections
- No Ainu name for the Umekawa appears in any Edo-period document. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
The Saru dialect dictionary carries una as a verb 'cover with ash'. There is no recorded Ainu form of this river name to test the reading against.
mem-nay
メムナイ ‘stream of the spring’ received reading- mem ‘spring, place where water wells up’
- nay ‘stream’
Proponent: 梅川の河川標識
The marker reads 「アイヌ語でメムは沢水が湧き出ている所、ナイは「川」の意味。メム・ナイかメム・ウス・ナイであったものが、語源の一部が省略されメム川となり、それが転訛して梅川となった。」 mem names occur across Hokkaidō and along the Yoichi River: Memu in Niki, Taimemu in Ōe, Horomemu in Ginzan, Rarumaniusimemu in Nagasawa. No plum tree is remembered as having been planted here, which the article notes against the Japanese reading of the name.
Variants
- mem-us-nay ‘stream where there is a spring’ — The second form the marker allows.
Objections
- No source has been found that writes the Umekawa as メム. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
mem is a common toponymic element in the Yoichi basin, and the sound change メム to ウメ is short. The reading rests on no record of the name in that shape.
ウメ
ウメ ‘the river of the chief Ume’ proposed- ウメ ‘the name of an Ainu chief’
Proponent: 中村源次郎（『北海道各村草創回顧集』） (Nakamura Genjirō (『北海道各村草創回顧集』))
From 『北海道各村草創回顧集』: 「今の梅川町を流るる梅川なども其頃は盛んに鮭が登り、これを土人のウメという酋長が漁獲支配して居たので、のちにこの付近を梅川町と呼称した。」 Nakamura Genjirō came to Yoichi in 1873 and later became mayor, so he spoke of a time he knew.
Objections
- The author searched the Ainu household registers and found no one named Ume in the main rolls. The 林家文書 record an old man called ウムリ, the nearest name found; another possibility the author raises is an Ainu who took Ume as a Japanese name. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
A personal name, not an Ainu-language reading. The witness knew the period at first hand, and the name he gives has not been found in the registers.
Attestations
- 梅川 document Edo period 松浦図ほか江戸期の文献
No Ainu name for this river appears in the Edo-period record, and Matsuura's maps do not carry it.
zenibako_trek…