.... Just curious as to where the name “Easter” came from. I was hoping he was going to explain it in this article.
“.... Just curious as to where the name “Easter” came from. I was hoping he was going to explain it in this article.”
.... i read somewhere that it derives from the name Isis or Ishtar.
Herod noted it.
Acts Chapter 12
1 Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. 2 And he killed James the brother of John with the sword. 3 And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also.
(Then were the days of unleavened bread.)
4 And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending
after Easter
to bring him forth to the people.
5 Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him. 6 And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison. 7 And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands. 8 And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so he did. And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me. 9 And he went out, and followed him; and wist not that it was true which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision. 10 When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord: and they went out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed from him.
Since the term ‘easter’ is used by English and German speakers ...while elsewhere in the world it called by derivations of the Hebrew word for passover, psach ... it would not be derived from “Ishtar” as has been claimed by the wicca and neopagan revisionists and really makes no sense. It would have to be derived from the German or English languages [and English is Germanic]... neither of which had anything to do with Ishtar.
Most likely it comes from the German words ‘Ost’, ‘Ostern,’ or ‘Ostlichen.’ The women discovered the stone rolled away from the tomb in the early morning when the sun was rising...in the Osten.
Easter is the term only in English and German for the Pascal celebration.
In other languages it is a derived from passover, Pascal, pasqua etc.
Even in English and German it originated after the reformation when local languages were used.
Where does it come from?
There is now widespread consensus that the word derives from the Christian designation of Easter week as in albis, a Latin phrase that was understood as the plural of alba (“dawn”) and became eostarum in Old High German, the precursor of the modern German and English term. The Latin and Greek Pascha (“Passover”) provides the root for Pâques, the French word for Easter
Your question is then not where the celebration came from but the name, yet the two are often linked. Let me thus say that it is true that even John Henry Newman states that many things in Catholicism, including holy days "are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church." For "the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace." (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative Power; http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html)
However, not only is what we call Easter a celebration of the fulfillment of Passover, from death to life, and thus we call it Resurrection Day, but even if the name is from paganism, that does not mean it is a celebration of paganism, any more than the use of the name Sunday is.
As for your specific question, a very good article on this is by Roger Patterson at https://answersingenesis.org/holidays/easter/is-the-name-easter-of-pagan-origin/
According to various sources, the name Easter has its origin with a goddess of the Anglo-Saxons named Eostre (also Estre, Estara, Eastre, Ostara, and similar spellings in various sources). It is believed that she is the goddess of the dawn and was worshipped in the spring by pagans in Northern Europe and the British Isles. In The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop claimed Eostre is actually a name derived from the Babylonian goddess Astarte.
Hislop’s logic becomes incomprehensible in places, and he made fundamental errors demonstrating his thinking to be false. For instance, he argued on a phonetic basis that Eostre from Saxony must be the same as Astarte, Ishtar, and Ashtoreth. This is a leap to consider their relationships based on the sound of the names alone. We might find many examples of words that sound the same in various languages but share no common root or meaning. Hislop attempted to make other connections, but they are unconvincing and do not take into consideration the time these goddesses were worshipped or the importance of the confusion of languages at Babel. He also neglected to consider the relationship between the English and German words used today.
There remains only one written record of a goddess who might be connected to Eostre of the Saxons. The church scholar Bede,2 who lived in modern-day England from AD 673–735, recorded the names of several of the goddesses worshipped by early Saxons. He identified Eostre as one whose festivals were celebrated in the month given her name.
Eosturmanath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month,” and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.3
Bede’s description was tentatively confirmed in the nineteenth century by Jacob Grimm. Grimm was a linguist of the highest caliber who studied and preserved the histories, languages, and traditions of the Germanic peoples, also called Teutonic in older literature. This would include the Franks, Saxons, Angles, Slavs, Vandals, Goths, and others. These groups would have shared a common language family, and Grimm traced the connections among many of their gods and goddesses in his writings. Bede is discussed in the work Teutonic Mythology, first published in 1835.
The two goddesses, whom Beda (De temporum ratione cap. 13) cites very briefly, without any description, merely to explain the months named after them, are Hrede and Eâstre, March taking its Saxon name from the first, and April from the second. We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ostarmânoth is found as early as Eginhart [c. 800] ([contemporary of Charlemagne]). The great christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of [Old High German] remains the name ôstarâ; it is mostly found in the plural, because two days (ôstartagâ, aostortagâ, Diut. 1, 266) were kept at Easter. This Ostrâ, like the [Anglo Saxon] Eâstre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries.
All the nations bordering on us have retained the Biblical “pascha;” even Ulphilas writes paska, not austro, though he must have known the word; the Norse tongue also has imported its paskir, Swed[ish] pask, Dan[ish] paaske. The [Old High German] adv. ôstar expresses movement toward the rising sun (Gramm. 3, 205), likewise the [Old Norse] austr, and probably an [Anglo Saxon] eástor and Goth[ic] áustr.4
Some scholars have called Eostre an invention of Bede and discount the connections, but the confirmation of Grimm cannot be easily discredited; nor does the quality of Bede’s other works lead us to disbelieve him. Grimm established a clear connection between the Anglo-Saxon Eâstre and the German Ostrâ. Similar connections are found in etymologies that describe the origin of Easter from many sources. Ester and oster, the early English and German words, both have their root in aus, which means east, shine, and dawn in various forms.5 These names may have developed independent of the name of the goddess as a reference to the Easter festivals, or they may have been related to her name in some way.
Could There Be Another Origin of the Name Easter? Contrary to suggesting a connection to a Saxon goddess, some have suggested Easter finds its root in the German word for resurrection—auferstehung. In a footnote to his translation of the work of Eusebius, Christian F. Cruse defended the usage of the word Easter:
Our English word Passover, happily, in sound and sense, almost corresponds to the Hebrew [pesach], of which is a translation. Exod. Xii. 27. The Greek pascha, formed from the Hebrew, is the name of the Jewish festival, applied invariably in the primitive church to designate the festival of the Lord’s resurrection, which took place at the time of the passover. Our word Easter is of Saxon origin, and of precisely the same import with its German cognate Ostern. The latter is derived from the old Teutonic form of auferstehn, Auferstehung, i. e. resurrection. The name Easter is undoubtedly preferable to pascha or passover, but the latter was the primitive name.6
Nick Sayers argued along these lines to suggest that the origin of Easter in English comes from the German:
...The English word Easter is of German/Saxon origin and not Babylonian as Alexander Hislop falsely claimed. The German equivalent is Oster...
n the Hebrew, Passover is Pesach. The Greek form is simply a transliteration8 and takes the form Pascha.
We should also consider the early translations by German and English scholars in this examination. John Wycliffe was the earliest translator to publish a complete New Testament in English (1382), though he did his translation from the Latin Vulgate. Wycliffe transliterated the word pascha to pask, rather than translating it. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German (New Testament in 1522), he chose the word Oster to refer to the Passover references before and after the Resurrection.
William Tyndale translated the Bible into English from the Greek and Hebrew. His New Testament (1525) uses the word ester to refer to the Passover. In fact, we owe our English word Passover to Tyndale...
It would seem from the translations of Luther and Tyndale that by 1500, the word oster/ester simply referred to the time of the Passover feast and had no association with the pagan goddess Eostre...
Could the Meaning of Easter Have Changed over the Centuries?...
Read on if you want. https://answersingenesis.org/holidays/easter/is-the-name-easter-of-pagan-origin/