Bonin

name

name ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname from French.
  2. 2
    An archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean, part of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc administered as Ogasawara (a subprefecture of Tokyo prefecture, Japan).

Synonyms

All synonyms
ogasawara islands

Example

More examples

"The confections at Honest Chocolate are made with agave nectar, rather than cane sugar, and have a very high percentage of cacao... something customer Jessica Bonin appreciates."

Etymology

From French Bonin in an 1817 monograph on the islands by the French scholar Rémusat, misunderstanding Japanese 無人島 (mujintō, “desert island”) as a proper name for the Ogasawaras, misreading the kanji as the related pronunciation buninjima, and then mistranscribing the vowel into French.

Related phrases

Bonin IslanderBonin IslandsBonin greenfinchIzu-Bonin-Mariana Arc

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.