Ainu Morpheme Explorer
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Urakawa, Hidaka region, Hokkaidō

浦河

うらかわ Urakawa

A name the article calls full of puzzles: recorded from the first as Urakawa and never in an Ainu-looking spelling, so that a Japanese origin cannot be set aside.

Ainu spellings: Ur-rap-ka

Analyses

urar-pet

ウララペツ

received reading

river of mist

Proponent: 定説

Objections

zenibako_trek2025 「浦河（うらかわ）」
Analysis details
Confidence: low

Both parts are dictionary words; the form the reading requires is absent from the documentary record, which is uniform from the seventeenth century on.

ur-rap-ka

ウラッカ

proposed

above the descending hill

  • *ur-rap descending hill
  • ka the upper part of

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

The author sets the name beside other ura names: Urahoro in Tokachi, which sounds Ainu, the Uragawa in Shizunai and the Urappu River in Shibetsu, and puts aside the ura names built on uray 'weir' and uras 'bamboo grass'. From Urappu he tries out a word ur-rap 'descending hill', which lets Urakawa be ur-rap-ka 'above the descending hill' and Urahoro ur-rap-or 'place of the descending hill'. He offers this as a hypothesis only and states that a Japanese name, 'the river of the inlet', remains the most likely reading, since 浦 is the Japanese word for an inlet.

zenibako_trek2025 「浦河（うらかわ）」
Analysis details
Confidence: low

The head element is a word the author frames as a trial, with no dictionary behind it, and he states himself that a Japanese origin is the more likely reading.

Urara-pet

proposed

Foggy river

Proponent: John Batchelor

Batchelor1905 § V "Place Names Considered", s.v. Urakawa
Analysis details
Confidence: low

Batchelor's reading and gloss as printed in 1905; the segmentation is his, and several of its elements answer to no dictionary headword.

Attestations

  • うらかわ / 浦川 document 17th century onward 津軽一統志; 元禄郷帳

    The name appears as Urakawa from its first occurrence, with no variation in the spellings. The spelling Urarapetsu is in no Edo-period source.

  • ウラカ document 19th century 松浦武四郎の記録
    本名ウラカにして

Related names

  • 向別・向地 むこうべつ・むこち — The former names of the present town centre, Mukuchi and Mukobetsu, which the author reads muk-ot-i or muk-ot-pet 'place where bonnet bellflower grows'. The names survive as the Mukochi and Mukōbetsu rivers. zenibako_trek2025

Sources