Note 174 — Chapter III · THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IONA.
Reading edition
Dr. Reeves has conclusively shown that the name of Iona has arisen from a misprint of the word Ioua, the adjective form used by Adamnan—the root of which was Iou.—See Reeves’s Adamnan, p. cxxvii. The oldest forms of the name are Hii, Ia, and I. But we shall, for greater convenience, retain the conventional name of Iona. The usual etymologies of I thona, the island of waves, or I shona, the sacred isle, are of course untenable.