Coll is sometimes derived from Gaelic coll, 'hazel'. However, the name is given as Colosus in the Life of St Columba by Adamnán, the seventh century abbot of Iona.* Early forms are listed in As /s/ between vowels had been lost in Celtic before Adamnán's time, Watson suggests that Colosus may represent a pre-Celtic name. Richard Coates has proposed that the name may be related to Greek kolossós and may have referred to a humanoid standing stone located on the island, like those still seen on North Uist and Lewis. As Kolossós is not originally a Greek word, Coates suggests that the name could have been given to Coll at a time when the kolossói of Mediterranean culture were well-known, or named "by speakers of a language in which the ancestor of the word was the native term." In Icelandic, the word kollur (Old Norse: kollr, Norwegian: koll or kolle) means "a rounded protrusion, such as a rounded mountaintop, or a tussock".
