The name means rocky shore waves. Isonami was a Fubuki-class destroyer built at Uraga. She was laid down on 19 October 1926, launched on 24 November 1927 and commissioned on 30 June 1928, in Destroyer Division 19 with Uranami, Shikinami and Ayanami. From 1937 she covered landings at Shanghai and Hangzhou.
She was at Samah on Hainan at Pearl Harbor. From December 1941 to January 1942 she escorted the heavy cruisers Suzuya, Kumano, Mogami and Mikuma for the Malaya, Banka and Palembang operations. She was assigned to the invasion of Java, northern Sumatra and the Andamans, and patrolled out of Port Blair during the Indian Ocean raid.
On 4 and 5 June 1942 she was with Yamamoto's main fleet at Midway. On the way home she collided with Uranami and went to Yokosuka for repairs. She trained with the carriers Junyo and Hiyo and ran Tokyo Express missions from Truk. American aircraft damaged her off Buna on 1 December 1942, and on 18 December she rescued survivors from the torpedoed cruiser Tenryu.
In February 1943 she was reassigned to the Southwest Area Fleet at Surabaya. On 9 April 1943, escorting a convoy from Surabaya to Ambon, she was torpedoed and sunk by USS Tautog while picking up survivors from Penang Maru. Seven of her crew died and nine were injured. She was struck from the Navy List on 1 August 1943.
Sources: Allyn Nevitt's combinedfleet.com Tabular Record of Movement for IJN Isonami; Wikipedia, Japanese destroyer Isonami, rewritten here.