View Message

If we assume for a moment that Esther is indeed derived from a Persian word for star, then yes, most likely! :) Both Latin and Persian are Indo-European languages:

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages (in English)

---

This means that they are related to each other, as they are ultimately descended from the same language, namely Proto-Indo-European (PIE for short):

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language (in English)

---

The PIE word for star is hypothesised to be *h₂stḗr:

---

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂stḗr (in English)

---

As you can see, that word already looks similar to Esther! Not so much to Estelle, which comes from Latin stella, but the connection and resemblance becomes stronger the further you go back in time:

---

stella → *stērlā or *stērolā → *h₂stḗr

---

For this, please see (and click further from there):

---

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stella#Latin (in English)

---

So, provided that Esther is ultimately of Persian origin, then it is indeed etymologically related to Estelle. However, if Esther actually comes from the name of the Akkadian goddess Ishtar, then it is not related to Estelle. After all, the Akkadian language is an extinct Semitic language, and the Semitic languages are not Indo-European languages. Instead, they belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family:

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages (in English)