So, my husband made what I deem an incredible etymology discovery this weekend. That isle and island are completely unrelated words, from different roots.
Color me baffled.
The world island was originally spelled yland, and appeared in 1590…to replace the Old English igland. This spelling is taken from ieg, a word influenced by Proto-Germanic, which means “thing on the water” LOL.
The spelling changed from yland to island in 1590, however, because of the word isle.
Isle is from the French isle, which in turn traces its roots to the Latin insula. So, the same meaning, but one Latin root and one German, and they sounded the same…hence, I suppose, why ye Older English folk decided to spell them the same too. Thereby confusing the following generations into thinking them indelibly related. 😉
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.
The English never used ‘ye,’ it was just an oddly coincidental typographical mistake. Before it was properly standardized, the ‘th’ sound was written with a thorn character (þ), but in English blackletter, þ and y look very similar.
Wow yeah I definitely always thought them related! Didn't know they had two different roots and all that! Thanks for sharing!