Estelle (given name)

Estelle is a female given name of Latin origin, and means star.[1]

Saint Estelle was a martyr who purportedly lived in Aquitania in the third century AD, although the earliest references to her date from the Middle Ages. The earliest formats of this Saint's name, Eustella/Eustelle and Eustalia, morphed into Estelle by Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral due to association with Estela (Occitan for star, of which Estelle is essentially a phonetic rendering in French). Saint Estelle is the patron saint of the Felibrige, a literary and cultural association founded by Mistral and other Provençal writers to defend and promote their language.

Star is the meaning generally assigned the name Estelle, although the format Eustalia suggests the name's true root is the Greek eustales: well-groomed.[2] Despite the reported popularity of the saint [3] the name Estelle was afforded little evident usage prior to the publication in 1788 of the pastoral Estelle by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, the first famous historical namesake, Estelle Fornier (née Dubœuf), muse of the composer Berlioz, who was born in 1797.[4] Best-known overall in France due to model Estelle Lefébure (born 1966),[5][6] the name Estelle has proven substantially more popular in Belgium than France.[1]

Estelle came into vogue in the British Isles in the mid-19th century likely as a variant of the similar Stella which had recently become fashionable. Estelle was also promoted via utilization by a number of novelists who wrote in English, most notably Charles Dickens in variant form for the character Estella Havisham in his novel Great Expectations published in August 1861 after being serialized weekly from December 1860 with Estella being introduced in Chapter 8 on 19 January 1861. The general scholarly consensus is that in choosing Estella as the name of the remote love object of his novel's focal character: Pip - whose full given name is Philip - , Dickens was evoking Sir Philip Sidney's poetic wooing of the unattainable Stella in Astrophel and Stella (1591). [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] Several other widely read authors of the day gave the name Estelle to major characters in their novels, Catherine Gore in Romances of Real Life as early as 1829 although most examples date from mid-century, such as Annie Edwards in Creeds (1859), E.D.E.N. Southworth in The Lady of the Isle (1859), and Augusta Jane Evans in St. Elmo (1866).[13]

Estelle and Estella remained popular from roughly 1880 to 1930, with a marked decline in usage since 1960.[1] Estelle has overall been more popular in the United States than in the British Isles, with there being at least two prominent American namesakes: writer Estelle Anna Lewis (1824–1880) [14] and society woman Estelle Skidmore Doremus (1830–1905),[15] who significantly predate the name's mid-19th century British vogue.

Estelle is also used as an alternative form of Esther.[16]

The name Estelle made headlines in February 2012 when King Carl Gustaf of Sweden announced Estelle as the given name chosen for his newborn granddaughter (see Princess Estelle, Duchess of Östergötland). The choice of a French name with only a peripheral profile in Sweden - a 2012 year-end tally would estimate that a total of 663 Swedish residents bore the given name Estelle [22] - touched off a flurry of media debate with writer Herman Lindqvist, who has acted as a historical consultant to the Swedish Royal Family, expressing the extreme negative position thus: "Totally unexpected and inappropriate...No name for a future ruler...Estelle sounds like the name of a nightclub queen."[23] Conversely top Scandinavian royalty pundit Kjell Arne Totland (no) reacted positively, calling Estelle "a very nice name, rich in tradition yet modern."[23]