Esther (אֶסְתֵּר) is the Hebrew name of the queen of Persia in the Book of Esther, who saved her people from destruction. The name is generally believed to derive from the Persian setareh, meaning "star" — the same root as Soraya and the English word "star." Some scholars link it to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
Esther was popular in Britain and America from the 19th century onward, peaking in the early 20th. After decades of decline, it is returning in 2020s as part of the broader revival of biblical names. Today it sits in the U.S. top 200.
Esther 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.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Esther reduce to 3, The Communicator. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.