Ionian

[ahy-oh-nee-uh n] /aɪˈoʊ ni ən/

adjective

of or pertaining to Ionia.

of or pertaining to the branch of the Greek people named from Ion, their legendary founder.

noun

a member of one of the four main divisions of the prehistoric Greeks who invaded the Greek mainland and, after the Dorian invasions, emigrated to the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor.

Compare Achaean (def 5), Aeolian (def 2), Dorian (def 2).

an Ionian Greek.

Origin

1555-65; Ioni(a) + -an

British Dictionary definitions for Ionian

Ionian

/aɪˈəʊnɪən/

noun

a member of a Hellenic people who settled in Attica in about 1100 bc and later colonized the islands and E coast of the Aegean Sea

adjective

of or relating to this people or their dialect of Ancient Greek; Ionic

of or relating to Ionia

(music) relating to or denoting an authentic mode represented by the ascending natural diatonic scale from C to C and forming the basis of the modern major key See also Hypo-

Word Origin and History for Ionian

adj.

"of Ionia," the districts of ancient Greece inhabited by the Ionians (including Attica and the north coast of the Peloponnesus, but especially the coastal strip of Asia Minor, including the islands of Samos and Chios). The name (which Herodotus credits to an ancestral Ion, son of Apollo and Creusa) probably is pre-Greek, perhaps related to Sanskrit yoni "womb, vulva," and a reference to goddess-worshipping people.

Also used of the sea that lies between Italy and the northern Peloponnesus (1630s). The musical Ionian mode (1844) corresponds to our basic major scale but was characterized by the Greeks as soft and effeminate, as were the Ionians generally.

The Ionians delighted in wanton dances and songs more than the rest of the Greeks ... and wanton gestures were proverbially termed Ionic motions. [Thomas Robinson, "Archæologica Græca," 1807]