Entry № 3032 · Old English origin

Eostre Eostre — Meaning, Origin & Baby Name Popularity

/ AY-oh-strah /
Gender
Girl
Origin
Old English
Meaning
"Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and dawn (origin of Easter)"
Syllables
1
First recorded
Medieval (Old English)

A name that means "anglo-saxon goddess of spring and dawn (origin of easter)".

Eostre (Old English Ēostre, attested in Bede's De temporum ratione, 725 CE) was the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, dawn, and rebirth — celebrated in the Anglo-Saxon month of Eosturmonath (April). Jacob Grimm reconstructed a Continental Germanic counterpart Ostara in Deutsche Mythologie (1835); her sacred animal was the hare. The modern Easter egg and Easter Bunny are believed to descend from her cult.

Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and dawn. The Christian Easter takes her name; the Easter Bunny was her sacred animal.

The name in its native script.

Ēostre
Transliteration
Ēostre
Pronunciation
/ ˈeɪ.oʊ.strə /
Root
Grammatical form

Where Eostre stands.

Eostre does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.

Eostres before her.

Real people
Eostre
Anglo-Saxon spring goddess.
In fiction
Eostre
Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
2001

Names connected to Eostre.

The number behind Eostre.

1

The Leader

In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Eostre reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.