Ostara

[ɒsˈtɑːrə]

Meaning

reconstructed Old High German name for a Germanic goddess, cognate with Old English Ēostre

Background Story

Ostara is a reconstructed Old High German name for a goddess, proposed because the Old High German name for April was Ôstarmânoth, a cognate of the Old English Ēosturmōnaþ. Bede wrote in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time that the pagan Anglo-Saxons held feasts in honour of the goddess Ēostre during the month named after her, and that this became the English name for the Paschal season, Easter. Scholars have traced the name back by linguistic reconstruction to a Proto-Germanic goddess called *Austrō(n) and further to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, *H₂ewsṓs. The theory of a Continental Germanic goddess *Ôstara is supported by votive inscriptions to goddesses called the matronae Austriahenae, found in 1958 in Rhein-Erft-Kreis, Germany.