Etymology: Old English ígland (íegland), íland, Anglian égland = Old Norse eyland, Old Frisian eiland (Middle Dutch, Middle Low German eilant, Dutch, East Frisian eiland), a compound of Old English íeg, íg, Old Norse ey (Norwegian öy), Old Frisian ey ‘isle’ + land n.¹ The simple íeg = Old High German auwa, ouwa, Middle High German ouwe, German aue, au, corresponded to Gothic type *ahwiô, aujô, a substantivized feminine of an adjective derived < ahwa ‘water’ (Old Saxon and Old High German aha, Old Frisian and Old Norse á, Old English éa), with sense ‘of or pertaining to water’, ‘watery’, ‘watered’, and hence ‘watered place, meadow, island’. A cognate compound frequent in Old English was éaland, lit. ‘water-land’, ‘river-land’; and a derivative of the simple íeg, ég, exists in eyot, ait. The ordinary Middle English and early modern English form was iland, yland. (Eland in 14–15th cent. may representing Old English éaland or egland.) In 15th cent. the first part of the word began to be associated with the synonymous ile, yle (of French origin), and sometimes analytically written ile-land; and when ile was spelt isle, iland analogously followed it as isle-land, island; the latter spelling became established as the current form before 1700.

Etymology: < island n.