English
Jonestown
From Jones + town, after Reverend Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple.
Proto-Celtic *dūnom ‘stronghold, rampart’
Proto-Germanic *tūną ‘fence, enclosure’
Proto-West Germanic *tūn ‘fence’
Old English tūn ‘an enclosed piece of ground’
Middle English toun ‘a town or city’
English town
Today it means
name A former settlement in northern Guyana founded by the Peoples Temple cult, and the site of an infamous mass murder-suicide in November 1978.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Jonestown