The story
- Early Modern Spanish · derived fromIsla Sufre
- English · derived fromSulphur Island
- English todayIwo Jima
From the early modern Japanese misreading Iwōjima for 硫黄島 (Iwōtō, “Sulfur Island”), a calque of English Sulphur Island in accounts of James Cook's voyages, possibly originally from Early Modern Spanish Isla Sufre although the island was left unnamed by its first known discoverer Bernardo de la Torre.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.