According to the Hebrew Bible, queen Esther was born with the name הֲדַסָּה Hadassah ("Myrtle"). Her name was changed to Esther to hide her identity upon becoming queen of Persia. The three letter root of Esther in Hebrew is s-t-r (סתר), "hide, conceal". The passive infinitive is (לְהִסָּ֫תֶר), "to be hidden".[1]
Esther first occurs as a given name in Europe and the British Isles at the time of the Reformation prior to which the occurrence of Biblical names – unless borne by saints – was unusual.[3] The modified form, Hester, has seemingly co-existed with the original Esther throughout the name's usage in the English-speaking world, where despite a theoretic slight difference in pronunciation, Esther and Hester were long largely – perhaps totally – interchangeable, with it being routine for a woman cited as Esther in one document to be elsewhere documented as Hester. One example of this is Esther Johnson, the "Stella" of Jonathan Swift, whose baptismal record identifies her as Hester but who always signed herself Esther.[4] Similarly, Swift wrote letters to his "Vanessa": Esther Vanhomrigh, in which Swift sometimes wrote her first name in the respective address as Esther and sometimes as Hester.[5] The interchangeable usage of Esther and Hester had essentially been phased out by 1900,[6] with Esther retaining a high usage (especially in North America), whereas the usage of Hester has shown a progressive decline.
The 9 September 1893 birth of Esther Cleveland, daughter of US president Grover Cleveland, was heavily publicized as the first birth of a presidential child in the White House; the press announcements of her name stated it meant "star". The 1891 birth of Cleveland's first daughter, also Biblically named Ruth, had caused a media sensation and boosted Ruth into the top ten of American girl's names,[7] and while the public endorsement of Esther as the choice of name for Cleveland's second daughter was more muted, Esther did reach its all-time zenith of US popularity soon after Esther Cleveland's birth, being ranked as the #27 most popular name for American girls for the year 1896.[8]
Esther has been a well-used name for Caucasian baby girls born in New York City,[9] and has remained a favored name in some Jewish communities such as those in New York. It has also increased in usage along with other Biblical names for babies born during the COVID-19 pandemic by parents seeking comfort in their religious faith.[10][11]
^Brown, Francis (2012). The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Boston MA: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. ISBN978-1-56563-206-6.
^The use of Ishtar as the original name of Esther is based on the idea that an old Babylonian myth has been adapted by Judeans in which the gods of Babylon (Marduk [Mordechai] and Ishtar [Esther] fight for the control of the King against the Elamite gods of Hammambam [Hamon] and a god who is transformed into Vashti.[citation needed][1]
^Palmer, Arnold E (2015). In Their Footsteps: a 500 year genealogical odyssey. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN978-1-5144-2123-9.
^Algeo, Matthew (2011). The President Is a Sick Man: wherein the supposedly virtuous Grover Cleveland survives a secret surgery at sea and vilifies the courageous newspaperman who dared expose the truth. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. pp. 50, 172. ISBN978-1-56976-350-6.
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