Tokachi River

is a river in Hokkaidō, Japan.

Etymology

In 1820, the explorer Takeshiro Matsuura (松浦 武四郎) proposed "Tokachi" as the name of the surrounding Tokachi Province, with each character corresponding to a Japanese homophone. The province was named after this river, which in turn was derived from the Ainu language word .

Although the exact origins of "tokapci" were unknown, Hidezo Yamada, an Ainu language researcher, proposed these origins:

• tokap-usi ("breast, somewhere")
• toka-o-pci ("swamp, around a place, either")

References