銭函

Proponent: 『角川日本地名大辞典』ほか

The received account: herring were taken here in quantity, the fishermen prospered, and the boxes holding the money piled up until the place came to be called Zenibako. The Kadokawa dictionary of Japanese place names has 'Japanese named it Zenibako because the herring fishery brought enormous profit'; Hokkaidō ekimei no kigen has 'this place has long been known as a herring ground, the catches were large and life was rich, and they named it the money box of the fishing houses'; Chimei o meguru Hokkaidō and the JR station-origin dictionary say the same. Few of them mention a physical box; the sense is closer to a fishing ground that pays.

• seni tree whose bark is hard and peels like a shell
• + poko surf clam

Proponent: 『銭函郷土史 第一巻』

The local history: 'seni (sheni) means a tree whose bark is hard and peels like a shell, and poko is poku or pako, the surf clam. It means the place of the oak forest running some twenty kilometres from Ishikari, that is, of acorns for food, and of plentiful surf clams; senipoko will have been worn down to senihako over a long time.' The local history calls the forest kashi; the windbreak forest from Zenibako 3-chōme to 5-chōme is kashiwa oak.

Proponent: 「「箱根」「銭函」の地名由来－目からウロコの地名由来」

The proponent: 'Zenibako in Otaru, Hokkaidō, does not come from a box for the money made in the herring fishery. There the gentle sandy shore that has run from the mouth of the Ishikari River ends, and past the Yachi River the coast becomes a narrow passage below a marine terrace cliff. Zeni is seni, meaning a narrow place, and hako is a cliff, so Zenibako is the settlement on the narrow shore below the cliff.' A reading built from Japanese elements.

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

Built on Tamamushi Sadayū's statement that the place lay outside the unjōkin. The unjōkin was a levy paid to the unjōya, two parts in ten of the catch, which is why herring huts were called nihachi-goya. The Otarunai unjōya had stood at Zenibako and moved to Irifune, after which no fishing ground was set here for about 120 years. Fishing here was untaxed in that interval, so a fisherman kept what he took. The Ebisuya opened a ground in 1838, and by the time Matsuura and Tamamushi came through, nihachi huts stood in rows and the levy was collected; the name outlived the arrangement that gave it its sense.

• Ota sand
• + shup spit
• + kotan place

Proponent: John Batchelor

The Ainu name of this place is Ota-shupkotan which means Sand-spit place. Zeni-bako is a Japanese name meaning money-box.