Originally a Norman name, of Germanic origin, derived from īd ‘work’. This died out during the later Middle Ages. It was revived in the 19th century, influenced by its use in Tennyson's The Princess (1847) for the central character, who devotes herself to the cause of women's rights and women's education in a thoroughly Victorian way. The name is also associated with Mount Ida in Crete, which was connected in classical times with the worship of Zeus, king of the gods, who was supposed to have been brought up in a cave on the mountainside. In the 1930s it became famous as the name of the film star Ida Lupino (1914–1995).