ウトカンベツ うとかんべつ Utokanbetsu
Jinya-chō, Shiraoi, Iburi region, Hokkaidō
Ainu spellings: Utka-un-pet
The two readings differ over whether the name records an event or the bed of the stream.
Location
42.6202, 141.3108 · Coordinates: OpenStreetMap Nominatim, 2026-09-10, on ウトカンベツ川. Open in OpenStreetMap
Referents
- river The Utokanbetsu River, a tributary of the Shiraoi River flowing through Jinya-chō. River works have straightened it; the old course ran past the site of the Sendai domain camp
Analyses
u-tukan-pet
ウトゥカンベツ ‘river where they shot at each other’ received reading- u ‘each other’
- tukan ‘shoot at’
- pet ‘river’
Proponent: 定説
Explained as the river where the two sides shot arrows at each other in war. The Sendai domain camp stood at Jinya-chō and an Ainu casi stood there before it, which the author says makes the image of an exchange of arrows easy to follow.
Objections
- Names of this kind have no parallels, and the explanation reads as a story attached to the name afterwards. — zenibako_trek zenibako_trek…
The reading depends on an event; the article reports no other place name of the same shape.
utka-un-pet
ウッカンベツ ‘river with shallows’ proposedProponent: zenibako_trek（小樽銭函地名歴史研究会） (zenibako_trek (Otaru Zenibako Place-Name and History Society))
utka is a common landform word for shallows and appears in place names: water running with a murmur over shallow gravel where the stones show. The river ran beside the Shiraoi settlement. The present channel has been straightened, so the author could not see the shallows.
pet is a dictionary word in the sense used, and Batchelor carries utka as a word for rapids; the sense 'shallows' is given in the article without a dictionary citation. The landform it names cannot be checked on the present channel.