Is Estelle in the Bible?

No one named Estelle appears in the Bible. Estelle is an Old French name that comes from the Latin stella, “star.” It has no Hebrew origin and is not a form of Esther, though Esther may also mean “star.” The word itself is in the Latin Bible, which calls the star of the Magi stella.

Is Estelle in the Bible?

The name does not occur in the Hebrew or Greek text of the Bible or in any translation, and neither do Stella, Estella or Estela. The word behind it does. In the Vulgate, the Latin Bible of the Western Church, the Magi arrive in Jerusalem saying vidimus enim stellam ejus in oriente, “for we have seen his star in the east” (Matthew 2:2), and in the last chapter of the Bible Jesus calls himself stella splendida et matutina, “the bright morning star” (Revelation 22:16). French Bibles use étoile in both places, a word that comes from the same Latin stella as Estelle.

What does Estelle mean?

Estelle means “star.” It was rare in the English-speaking world in the Middle Ages and was revived in the 19th century, perhaps because of Estella Havisham, the heroine of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Estella is a Latinate form of the name, and Estela is the Spanish and Portuguese form. Stella is the Latin word itself, first used as a name by the English poet Philip Sidney in the 16th century for the woman addressed in his sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella.

In the United States, Estelle was among the 200 most common names for girls from 1880, when the records begin, until 1928, and ranked 106th in 1911. It dropped out of the top 1,000 after 1963, returned in 2012 and ranked 573rd in 2025. In France it was among the 100 most common names for girls from 1968 to 2004 and reached 27th place in 1994.

Is Estelle related to Esther?

Not by origin. Esther, the queen in the Book of Esther, also had a Hebrew name, Hadassah (Esther 2:7). The name Esther possibly means “star” in Persian, though another explanation connects it with the goddess Ishtar. The two names have met in use: the writer Jonathan Swift called Esther Johnson “Stella.” Estelle itself has no Hebrew meaning, and the Hebrew word for star is kokhav.

Mary, Star of the Sea

The Latin word also gave the Virgin Mary one of her best-known titles, Stella Maris, “Star of the Sea.” It first appears as an explanation of Mary’s Hebrew name, Miriam, in a book of Hebrew names translated by Jerome. Jerome probably wrote stilla maris, “a drop of the sea,” and a copyist turned stilla into stella. By the early Middle Ages the title was widespread, and the hymn Ave maris stella, “Hail, star of the sea,” dates from about the eighth century.

Is there a Saint Estelle?

Yes, though almost nothing about her is certain. Saint Estelle, first called Eustelle, is honored at Saintes in western France as a martyr of the third century. According to her legend, she was the daughter of a Roman official, was baptized by Saint Eutropius, the first bishop of Saintes, and refused every suitor; her father had her put to death in the arena of Saintes, and she was buried in Eutropius’s tomb. She appears in writing only in the Middle Ages, and many scholars doubt that she existed. Her feast, kept locally, is 11 May.

The form Estelle was given to her by the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral, who in 1854 put the Félibrige, the society he founded with six other poets to revive the Provençal language, under her patronage. Mistral compared the founders to the Magi greeting the star. The Félibrige still holds its yearly congress, the Santo-Estello, around her feast.

Related reading

• Is Star a Biblical Name? Not in English, Though Esther Means It
• What Is the Star of Bethlehem?
• Bible Verses About Stars
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names