The former municipality of Jona extended from the eastern shore of the main part of Lake Zürich (Kempraten) to the northern shore of Obersee, the upper or eastern division of Lake Zurich (Bollingen, Busskirch).

The settlement is named after the river, first recorded in Latinized form Johanna in AD 834, as super Johannam fluvium.

[1] The river name was likely adapted into Alemannic (Old High German) around the 8th century from a Gallo-Roman *Jauna as a weakly inflecting feminine *Jōna(n), yielding modern dialectal Jōne(n).

On January 1, 2007, the municipalities of Rapperswil and Jona merged to form a new political entity: Rapperswil-Jona has a population of 25,777 (as of December 2007).

The town's bus service, Stadtbus Rapperswil-Jona,[2] is provided by the Verkehrsbetriebe Zürichsee und Oberland (VZO)[3] since 2008.