Anyone who spends a few days crossing the island notices that the names sound unlike the rest of Japan: Wakkanai, Noboribetsu, Otoineppu, Kamuikotan, Shumarinai, Rumoi, Tomakomai. They are not Japanese words, which is why they resemble neither Kanazawa nor Nagoya nor Yokohama.
01 Eight names out of ten
The island was annexed, colonised and renamed Hokkaido in 1869. Until then it was known as Ezo, and those who lived on it were the Ainu, who had held their own map for centuries: every river, every cape, every valley had a name.
When the settlers arrived they did not rename the territory: they kept the names that already existed and moved them into Japanese writing. That is why the toponymy survived almost entire while the language was lost. Ainu today has very few speakers; the map, by contrast, is still in Ainu.
02 Two endings that explain nearly everything
The first is “-betsu”, from the Ainu “pet”, meaning river. It appears everywhere: Noboribetsu, Monbetsu, Bekkai, Shibetsu, Furubira. If a Hokkaido place name ends in “-betsu”, there is almost certainly running water.
The second is “-nai”, from the Ainu “nay”, a stream or a valley with water running through it. Wakkanai, Shumarinai, Soeushinai, Horonai, Otoineppu, Osamunai. Like the first, it is a hydrographic mark: the town is where it is because there was water there.
With those two words the map reads as what it is: an inventory of watercourses made by people who moved along rivers rather than roads. And it explains something otherwise puzzling: why so many towns on the island sit in places that now look arbitrary.
03 The characters do not mean what they seem to
Here is the detail that makes this useful rather than merely curious. When those names were written down, characters were chosen for their reading, not their sense. In Japanese this is called ateji: characters borrowed for their sound.
So “-betsu” is usually written with 別, which in Japanese means “separate”, “apart”. And “-nai” with 内, which means “inside”. Neither has the slightest connection to a river. Someone who knows Japanese and reads the kanji understands something that is not there; someone who reads the Latin transcription under the sign gets far closer to the original sense.
Which makes the practical rule counter-intuitive: in Hokkaido, to understand a name you should look at the line in Latin script and not at the characters.
04 Four names to test it on
Sapporo comes from “sat poro pet”, which translates as “dry great river”, a reference to the Toyohira that runs through the city. The island's capital carries the name of a river almost nobody looks at any more.
Wakkanai, the northernmost settlement in Japan, comes from “yam wakka nay”: cold water stream. Kamuikotan, a gorge on the Ishikari river, means “village of the kamuy”, the entities of the natural world in Ainu culture. And Shiretoko, the peninsula at the north-eastern tip, comes from “sir etok”: the end of the land.
05 Why this changes the trip
For two reasons, one practical and one not. The practical one: the names are geographical information. Knowing that a “-nai” or a “-betsu” means water lets you anticipate the terrain, the bridges and even where the next town will be while driving a secondary road with no signal.
The other is about reading. Hokkaido presents itself as the modern, planned, recent part of Japan, and in its architecture and its farming it is. But every road sign repeats, quietly and in another language, that somebody named this map first.
- Ends in “-betsu”: there is a riverFrom “pet”, Ainu for river. It is almost always written with the character 別, which in Japanese means “separate” and has nothing to do with it.別
- Ends in “-nai”: there is a streamFrom “nay”, a stream or a watered valley. Written with 内, which in Japanese means “inside”. Also unrelated.内
- Read the Latin script, not the kanjiStation boards carry the name in Latin script underneath. That line preserves the original Ainu sound; the characters do not.the trick
- A name is not a translationNone of these place names was translated into Japanese: the sound was transcribed. The meaning only appears if you go back to Ainu.sound, not sense
