Hirata Atsutane, a Japanese classical scholar in the Edo period, speculated that the name is from a word meaning, "a mountain standing up shapely as an of a rice plant". British missionary John Batchelor (1854–1944) argued that the name is from the Ainu word for "fire" ("fuchi") of the fire deity Kamui Fuchi, which was denied by a Japanese linguist Kyōsuke Kindaichi on the grounds of phonetic development (sound change). It is also pointed out that "huchi" means an "old woman" and "ape" is the word for "fire", "ape huchi kamuy" being the fire deity. Research on the distribution of place names that include "fuji" as a part also suggest the origin of the word "fuji" is in the Yamato language rather than Ainu. Japanese toponymist Kanji Kagami argued that the name has the same root as and , and came from its "long well-shaped slope".