Idlewild

Two ordinary words

Idlewild is not an old name and it does not have an etymology in the usual sense. It is a compound of two English words anyone can read: idle, meaning unused or doing nothing, and wild, meaning uncultivated. A wild place that is idle — ground nobody has taken up. It is the sort of name a nineteenth-century landowner or a railway company would give a patch of country, and that is broadly how it came about.

Our own listing gives the meaning as "a state of being calm and relaxed; also the name of a popular park in Scotland". The first half is an interpretation rather than a definition, and I could not find a park in Scotland by this name. There is a Scottish rock band called Idlewild, which may be where the confusion started.

The airport

The name's largest claim on public memory is an airport. Idlewild Airport was the original name of what is now John F. Kennedy International, the main international airport serving New York City, on the southwestern shore of Long Island in Queens. It was renamed for John F. Kennedy, and a generation of New Yorkers went on calling it Idlewild for years afterwards.

Black Eden

The other substantial Idlewild is a community in Michigan, and it has a history worth knowing before you use the name. Idlewild, in Yates Township in Lake County, was from 1912 until the mid-1960s one of the very few resorts in the United States where African Americans were permitted to vacation and to buy property. It was called the Black Eden of Michigan, it drew entertainers and professionals from across the country, and at the height of the summer season as many as twenty-five thousand people came for swimming, boating, fishing, riding, roller skating and night-time entertainment. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened other resorts to Black families, Idlewild's main reason to exist went with it.

That is the most interesting thing about the word, and it is why a name that looks like a developer's invention turns out to carry a real history. It also means the name is not neutral in Michigan in the way it is elsewhere.

Idlewild on a dog

EYE-dul-wyld. Three syllables, with the stress on the first. It is a long name for a dog and there is no natural short form — Idle is a strange thing to call an animal and Wild is worse. In practice it becomes Id, Iddy or Wilde, and you should pick one deliberately rather than letting the household drift into three.

The name sounds like a place, and that is how it will be read. It sets an expectation of somewhere green and quiet, which suits a dog that spends its time in fields. It is also, unavoidably, eight letters and two words, so it is the sort of name that looks better on a certificate than it sounds across a park.

See also: Willow · Clover · Flora · Sedona · Juno

Common questions