Easter
Feminine
Easter is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 5,513 girls against 66 boys since 1880.
Easter is the only major Christian feast in English named after a pagan goddess, and we have that on the authority of one monk. Bede, writing in the eighth century, says the month was called Eosturmonath after a goddess named Eostre whose festival fell in it — and no other source mentions her at all.
How old is the name Easter?
Easter was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Easter alive today was born around 1928, making them about 97 years old. About 1,700 people named Easter are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Easter most popular?
Easter peaked in 1883, reaching #411 nationally. See the whole 1883 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Eosturmonath to Easter
The story of Easter
Naming a child for the day of her birth is old and was ordinary in English-speaking countries: Noel, Natalie, Pascal and Easter all do it, and Easter turns up steadily in English and American records from the seventeenth century onward. The Esther complication is real — parish clerks wrote Easter for Esther often enough that some bearers of the name were baptized as one and recorded as the other. So a nineteenth-century Easter may be the feast, or a Hebrew queen, and the register will not say which.
Meaningscholars disagree
Not established
Bede's account is the only evidence for Eostre, and scholars have argued for centuries about whether he recorded a real cult or reasoned backwards from the month name. The word itself is Germanic and connected to a root about dawn and the east, which is why German has Ostern and English Easter while every other European language uses a form of the Hebrew Pesach. Separately, Easter has served as an English spelling of Esther, which is a different name entirely.
How the name formed
- Eosturmonath
- Easter
Related forms: Ostern · Esther
Pronouncing Easter
EES-tur
EES-tur, two syllables, stress at the front, said exactly as the feast. Esther is ESS-tur with a short first vowel, which is a real difference — the two names are distinguishable in speech even where the registers confused them.
Nicknames for Easter
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 1918125 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #411reached in 1883
- Change vs 2007
- −28.6%5 in 2017, from 7
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Easter in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ostern in German — related form
- Esther in Hebrew — related form
Easters among us
people named Easter are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Easter sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The word is universally known and the name is never mispronounced.
- It belongs to a documented tradition of naming children for the day of their birth.
- The Bede question behind it is a genuinely interesting piece of English history.
- It names one specific Christian feast, which is a strong association and a narrow one.
- Esther is a separate name that this one has been confused with for centuries, and the confusion continues.
- It goes to boys as well in the record, which is unusual for a feast name and worth knowing.
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Easter
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Easters are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,700 people named Easter are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Easter in 2025?
- Easter is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Easter with classmates?
- Easter will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More E names
The most-given names starting with E, all years combined.
Elizabeth#17 · Emily#34 · Emma#3 · Evelyn#8 · Ella#29 · Eleanor#12 · Erin#833 · Edna#2458
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Easter? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Easter and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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