月見里

Etymology 1
Unknown. The kanji spelling appears to be ateji, which would normally be read as tsukimi sato (literally “moon viewing village”).

One possible derivation suggests that this comes from an old alternate name for the village of Yamanashi in Shizuoka Prefecture (spelled ; annexed into the city of Fukuroi in 1963), such that the old spelling was used for the new name. However, this explanation is probably apocryphal.

An alternative explanation is that the spelling is an old pun. The area around Yamanashi village is relatively flat, and the story goes that the reading yama nashi originally meant +. The spelling 月見里 apparently was in reference to the unobstructed view of the moon. There is also a line from the epitaph of early Heian-period noh playwright that uses this spelling and reading, and the sense of “unobstructed view of the moon”:

Proper noun

 * : Yamanashi

Etymology 2
Appears to be a straightforward compound of.