恵比寿

One name, three appearances: a beer in the government Gazette by 1894, a station in 1906, a place-name in 1928 — and only the last of them says what it was named for, in the town's own hand.

In 1928 the town of Shibuya wrote down its reason. Two new place-names, Ebisu-dōri one-chōme and two-chōme, and against each the register gives the same line: named after Ebisu station. That link the town states in its own hand; the rest of the chain it does not. The station had opened on the thirtieth of October 1906 at Shimo-Shibuya, shared by steam and electric trains, says the county gazetteer of 1916. The same gazetteer describes the city tram's Ebisu line as the one running down below the Ebisu Beer company. And a beer of that name was in the government Gazette by 1894, one of four domestic beers in a Home Ministry notice of test results; that notice names no company. What the station itself was named for, none of the three records says. The characters spell a god of fortune, and spell him by sound alone.