Iona

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small island off the western coast of Scotland, famous as the site of an early Christian monastery founded by Saint Columba ; a feminine first name of Greek origin
2. An islet in the Inner Hebrides of western Scotland known for its ancient abbey and religious history ; a woman's personal name used in English-speaking countries
3. A small Scottish island in the Hebrides where a sixth-century monastery once stood ; a girl's first name borrowed from the place or from Greek roots

Etymology: Iona is the name of a small island off the west coast of Scotland, and its name has a tangled history. The most striking part is that the form we use today appears to be the result of a scribal mistake. Early Latin writers rendered the island's Old Irish name "Í" in a way that was probably misread, and the spelling "Iona" seems to have grown out of that misreading, which then took hold as the standard form. The underlying Old Irish name, Í, is short and simple, and the island's older Gaelic identity is what the word originally pointed to. The Latin attempt to fix it in writing turned a brief monosyllable into a three-syllable name, and that new shape stuck in English and other languages. The word thus preserves a record of how medieval scribes tried to adapt a Gaelic sound into Latin letters.