Ilbono

In Sardinia a village name can be dated from its last letter: those ending in s, like Cabras or Austis, are almost always Latin, while those ending in o point to a far older layer. Ilbono, which in the local speech is Irvono and once was Irbono, belongs to the second group, and the most widely followed explanation derives it from sirbone, the wild boar: the initial s would have been swallowed by the article su, so that Silbono became s'Ilbono. Other scholars propose instead bun, height, or the name of the Ilienses of the Barbagia mountains.

In the countryside around the village the nuraghi are nine according to Emanuele Melis and fourteen according to Vittorio Angius: the disagreement shows how far the counting still is from finished. In the Middle Ages Ilbono belonged to the giudicato of Cagliari and to the curatoria of Ogliastra; when the giudicato fell it passed to the Pisans, then to the Aragonese, who folded it into the county of Quirra granted in fief to Berengario Carroz. In 1603 the county became a marquisate and went to the Centelles, then to the Osorio de la Cueva, from whom the village bought itself out in 1839.