抄録
There are many different nominations of mountains in Japan. The author picked up here only the last syllables of the mountain-name. He count, ed More than seventy sorts all in Japan. Among them, “-yama”, “-také”, “-mori”, “-miné”, these four sorts of calling are definitely more frequent than the others. Hence he took in this paper the distribution and meaning oof these four suffixes. This study consists of two parts, the one is title significance and history of these four sorts, and the other is the historical geography of their distribution and meanings. . They are described as follows.
“Yama” is the name that has existed from the ancient time throughout the history of the Yamato race. It distributes widely all over the country and are attached to the highest Mountains as Fujino-yama as well as to the lowest hills as are seen everywher. “-Miné” has long a history as “-yama”, since the earliest time of the Yamato race. Many of these names are found in the famous poetical works, such as Mannyo-shyû. But now “-mine” has become less common because it changed its conceptionn into the meaning of mountain-ridge or tower-shaped peak. It does not distribute so widely as “yama” in the whole country, but is found rather densely is the districts that indicate the past Yamato race's domain and decreases in the marginal areas. “Také” is later in its history of development than “-mine”, but its distribution covers the whole country. It may be remarked that “-také” has a linguistic influence from continent. This development of “-také” was taken in the period of Nara dynasty. Having no distribution within the district of “-miné” and “-sen” (“-sen was existed from ancient times as “-miné”), “-také” has a blank area in the district of “-mine” and “-sen”. (Fig. 4) This district coincides with the area of the earlier period of Yamato dynasty. (Fig. 10) And “-také” is found on the rocky mountain.
“-Mori” has its origin in Ainu and Korean languages, perhaps the former influence was more definite. These names are almost found on the round topped peaks, and its distribution, according to the Law of Baxter, is made up from three districts as no distribution area in the centre, “-mori-yama” region in the intermediary, and “-mori” region in the outer part of Japan.
