Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc

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DERIVATION OF THE WORD "ISLAND."

Lexicographers from time to time have handed down to us, and proposed for our choice, two derivations of our English word Island; and, that one of these two is correct, has, I believe, never yet been called in question. The first which they offer, and that most usually accepted as the true one, is the A.-S. Ealand, Ealond, Igland; Belg. Eylandt: the first syllable of which, they inform us, is ea, Low Germ. aue, water, i.e. water-land, or land surrounded by water. If this etymon be deemed unsatisfactory, they offer the following: from the Fr. isle, It. isola, Lat. insula, the word island, they say, is easily deflected.

At the risk of being thought presumptuous, I do not hesitate to say, that both these alternatives are manifestly erroneous; and, for the following reason, I propose a third source, which seems to carry conviction with it: first, from analogy; and secondly, from the usage of the language from which our English word is undoubtedly derived, the Anglo-Saxon.

First, from analogy. Let us only consider how frequently names are given to parts of our hills, shores, rivers, &c., from their supposed resemblance to parts of the human body. Thus, for instance, we have a head land, a neck of land, a tongue of land, a nose of land (as in Ness, in Orfordness, Dungeness, and, on the opposite coast, Grinez); also a mouth of a river or harbour, a brow of a hill, back or chine of a hill, foot of a hill; an arm of the sea, sinus or bosom of the sea. With these examples, and many more like them, before us, why should we ignore an eye of land as unlikely to be the original of our word island? The correspondence between the two is exact. How frequently is the term eye applied to any small spot standing by itself, and peering out as it were, in fact an insulated spot: thus we have the eye of an apple, the eye or centre of a target, the eye of a stream (i.e. where the stream collects into a point—a point well known to salmon fishers), and very many other instances. What more natural term, then, to apply to a spot of land standing alone in the midst of an expanse of water than an eye of land?

In confirmation of this view, let us look to the original language; there we find the compounds of eag, ea, ægh, the eye, of very frequent occurrence: all of them showing that this compound ea-land is not only legitimate, but extremely probable. Thus we find, eag-æple, the pupil of the eye; eag-dura, a window-light, eye-door; eag ece, pain in the eye; eah-hringas, the orbits of the eyes. In the last instance, the g is dropped; and it is certain that eag was pronounced nearly as eye now is. From all this, is it too much to conclude that ea-land is the same as eye-land? But farther, Ig (A.-S.) sometimes stands by itself for an island, as also do Igland and Igoth, and Ii was the old name of Iona. Now I cannot find that there ever was the slightest connexion between the A.-S. Ig and water; nor do I believe that such an idea would ever have been started, but to support the old derivation of the word; I have never seen a genuine instance of such connexion brought forward....