Abstract
Disaster-originated placename is a kind of disaster subculture that is used for a practical purpose of identifying a location while reminding the past disaster experience. They are expected to transmit the risks and knowledge of high-risk low-frequency natural hazards, surviving over time and generations. This paper compares the perceptions to tsunami-originated placenames in local communities having realistic and exaggerated origins in Sanriku Coast, Japan. The reality of tsunami-originated placenames is first assessed by comparing the tsunami run-ups indicated in the origins and that of the tsunami in the Great East Japan Earthquake 2011 using GIS and digital elevation model. Considerable proportions of placenames had exaggerated origins, but the group interviews to local communities revealed that origins indicating unrealistic tsunami run-ups were more believed than that of the more realistic ones. We discuss that accurate hazard information will be discredited if it contradicts to the people’s everyday life and the desire for safety, and even imprecise and ambiguous information can survive if it is embedded to a system of local knowledge that consistently explains the various facts in a local area that requires explanation.
Highlights
There has been a revival in the field of toponymy, or a study of placenames, once a largely discredited field within the discipline of geography [1]
To assess the reality of tsunami-originated placenames, we compare the tsunami reach indicated by the placenames and the tsunami inundation and run-ups recorded for Tsunami 2011 (Figure 2)
It shows that Tsunami 2011 did not reach the tsunami-originated places, except for the two: Usu-zawa and Sanmai-do, both of which are along the Kozuchi River in Otsuchi Town where the tsunami reached to an altitude of 15 m at a distance of 4119 m from the sea
Summary
There has been a revival in the field of toponymy, or a study of placenames, once a largely discredited field within the discipline of geography [1]. The focus shifted from collecting, classifying and seeking origins for names, to shedding light to larger questions in social science, humanities, and natural science: the goals that the pioneers of toponymy have envisaged [2]. This new strand has been made possible partly to the collection of placenames by the earlier toponymists, the national databases and gazetteers, and the widespread use of GIS. Frajer and Feidor use a similar approach in identifying transformations of water bodies through modernization [10]
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