Esther

131,090 people in America carry this name — ranked #432 of 923.

A name being given more often than it was a generation ago.

Say it EHS tur

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

EH1 S T ER0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 131,090 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 43.4 about 1 in 2,528 people

What Esther means and where it comes from

Persian in origin, reading literally as “star”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Esther has been given

261,533 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1918, with 6,588 of them.

80 90 00 10 20s 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Esther

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Esther Elizabeth — same opening
  • Esther Emily — same opening
  • Esther Rebecca — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Short forms of Esther

Short forms as recorded in a 19th-century glossary of Christian names, so the list is old rather than complete.

On the way up

Esther is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

Is Esther used for boys or for girls?

0.2% men
130,840 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 45.1%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 13.3%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 30.5%
  • Two or more races — 1.7%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 8.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Names with the same rhythm as Esther

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The same name abroad

  • Hetty English
  • Hesje Dutch
  • Ester It.|Hung
  • Essie English
  • Hester English
  • Esterre Italian
  • Hesthera Latin

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

The states where Esther is most common

In New York the name is given 3.1 times as often as it is across the country.

  • New York ×3.1
  • New Jersey ×2.4
  • Alaska ×1.7
  • Hawaii ×1.3
  • Washington ×1.2

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Compare Two Names

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Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Persian origin