Hinba is an island in Scotland of uncertain location that was the site of a small monastery associated with the Columban church on Iona. Although a number of details are known about the monastery and its early superiors, and various anecdotes dating from the time of Columba of a mystical nature have survived, modern scholars are divided as to its whereabouts. The source of information about the island is Adomnán's late 7th-century Vita Columbae.

The islands of Eileach an Naoimh, Jura, Colonsay and Oronsay are the most likely candidates, although Seil and Canna are also possibilities.

The origin of the name 'Hinba' appears to be Goidelic. The Hebrides remain the stronghold of the modern Gàidhealtachd and unsurprisingly this language has had a significant influence on the island names still found there. Why then would an island name vanish from the records? As a result of the Norse impact on Scotland from some point prior to 900 AD and for several centuries thereafter many of the Hebridean island names were altered or replaced. It has been argued that these changes to the onomasticon only applied to the islands north of Ardnamurchan and that original Gaelic place names predominate to the south. However, recent research suggests that the obliteration of pre-Norse names throughout the Hebrides was almost total and Gaelic derived place names on the southern islands are of post-Norse origin. Some islands names have been more persistent, especially amongst the larger islands, but it is clear that that is not the case for Hinba.

Watson states that the name "Hinba" is "readily explained as a latinised form" of the Old Irish inbe meaning an incision. This was one of the factors that led him to support the deeply indented Jura as the most likely location and in this he was followed by Broderick. However, it is clear that Scottish island names have involved frequent etymological reinterpretation and some of them are pre-Celtic in origin - perhaps even pre-Indo-European - which "leaves us with the thought that practically all the major islands in the Northern and Western Isles have very old names, so old and so linguistically and lexically opaque that we do not have any plausible referents for them elsewhere. They are linguistic fossils, perhaps some three thousand years old or even older." Etymology may therefore not be the best of guides to rely too heavily on in these circumstances.

According to Murray, the name Hinba, derives from the "old" Gaelic in (island) and ba (sea). He speculates that the original name would have been Na Hinba, meaning "the isles of the sea".

Columba (521–597), the first patron saint of Scotland, arrived in the kingdom of Dál Riata in modern Scotland from his homeland of Ireland in 563, and in the same year was granted land on Iona. This became the centre of his evangelising mission to the Picts. The Celtic monastic system made use of isolated retreat centres they called 'deserts' and there were two or more smaller monastic settlements associated with Iona. Mag Luigne on Tiree was one, Hinba the other, the latter being a favourite destination of Columba's for a period of contemplation. There were also similar outlying colonies on Elene Insula (see below) and Scia (Skye).

It is uncertain when Hinba was founded, but the best estimates put it between 564 and 574, as there is a story (see below) of Columba receiving a message from an angel to ordain Aedan mac Gabrain as King of Dal Riata, which occurred in the year 574. The text of Adomnan's book, also seems to be written as though there was only one monastery on Hinba along with a smaller hermitage.

St. Ernan, superior (praepositus) of Hinba was an uncle of St. Columba and one of the twelve who accompanied Columba from Ireland to Iona. He was appointed head of the community which Columba established on Hinba.