What is the origin of the name "Easter" for the Christian festival?

[my_torah]

 This is not "Torah" but a short study of the Etymology of how "Easter" got it's name - with a new theory of my own.

I've been curious about where the Anglo-Germanic name "Easter" comes from - "a pagan goddess called Eostre" is the usual response found on the web, but the evidence for her is very thin.

Such a hypothetical goddess is only mentioned once in literature by the Venerable Bede. Here's the quote:

"Eosturmonath 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."

And while the Venerable Bede associates month names with alleged pagan deities (attested to nowhere else in literature!) most of the old high German and Saxon months seem to be named more for agricultural seasons or the weather rather than for deities (eg "the month when you milk the cows a lot", "the muddy month", "Mild month" "Meadow month", "Weeds month" "harvest month" - see below). So I think that Eastro monath may simply have meant "the sunny month" and Bede's may be a false-etymology.

There is a suggestion that a collection of 150 x 2nd century Romano-Germanic votive inscriptions to the "Matronae Austriahenae" found in the town of Morken-Harff not far from the city of Bonn in Germany may relate to the same hypothetical goddess. But again that seems a bit thin. It could just mean: "the Mother-goddess of the East house"

What does seem to be clear is that the word "Easter" is connected to the word "East" and seems to come from a Sanskrit meaning of "Shining" (which parallels a similar development in Hebrew where mizrach means "East" and the root z-r-ch means "shining"). In German, it comes to mean dawn when the sun is rising in the East.

The name of "Austria" (Austereich) also seems to derive from the same meaning of "east" ie the empire to the East (of Germany), not to mention Essex (the country of the East Saxons and East-Anglia the country of the East Angles).

So my guess is Easter was called "Easter" by the Saxons, because it was the festival that fell in the Sunny month (Oestra monath) of April.

--

The Germanic calendars were lunisolar, the months corresponding to lunations. Tacitus writes in his Germania (Chapter 11) that the Germanic peoples observed the lunar months.

The lunisolar calendar is reflected in the Proto-Germanic term *mēnōþs "month" or Old English mōnaþ, being a derivation of the word for "moon", *mēnô — which shares its ancestry with the Greek mene "moon", men "month".
(Wikipedia)

The Anglo Saxon months:
January     - Æftera Geola - After Yule month

February    - Sōlmōnath - Muddy month
March        - Hrēðmonath - Wild month
April           - Eostremonath - Sunshine month (Summer began on the full moon of April)
May            - Thrimilce - Milk the cows three times a day month
June            - Ærraliða -  Before the nice weather month
(leap month, some years) - Thriliða -  Third nice weather month
July             - Æfteraliða -  After the nice weather month

August        - Weodmonath - Weeds month

September  - Hāligmonath - Holy month
October       - Winterfylleth  - Winter full month  (Winter began on the full moon of October)
November   - Blōtmonath   - Blood month (perhaps for slaughtering cattle)

December    - Ærra Geola -  Before Yule month