Korpokkur

The name is traditionally analysed as a tripartite compound of kor ("butterbur plant"), pok ("under, below"), and kur ("person") and interpreted to mean "people below the leaves of the Fuki" in the Ainu language.

Arnold Henry Savage Landor proposed a theory about the indigenous people of Hokkaido, which suggested that the Ainu, migrating from the north, overtook and displaced an earlier population known as the Koro-pok-kuru.

[7] These conclusions mostly come from misinterpretations of Hokkaido Jomon artifacts (such as pottery, tools, and arrowheads), which were understudied at the time and markedly different from what contemporaneous Ainu used.

Alexander Akulov[8] refutes early anthropologists, stating that the pit-dwellings supposedly associated with the pre-Ainu aboriginal people were also built by the Ainu themselves in the Kurils and Sakhalin, an argument also used by John Batchelor.

He found it humorous to imagine how tall the people who named the pit-dwellers "dwarves" must have been if they considered movement beneath the plant indicative of short stature.