Holiday Calendar

National Esther Day

Next celebratedSaturday, June 12, 2027

A day for people named Esther, whose biblical book is the only one of the Hebrew Bible missing from the roughly nine hundred manuscripts found at Qumran.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJune 12
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Its origin story belongs to another day.

No primary record identifies who established a name day for Esther on June 12, or why that date was chosen. The origin account that circulates online, which ties the day to Esther Grace Earl, describes a separate observance kept on August 3.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

Missing from the Dead Sea Scrolls

Roughly nine hundred manuscripts came out of the caves at Qumran. They held portions of every canonical book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther. National Esther Day honors the name that missing book carries.

Robert Alter, writing in the London Review of Books, called it an odd fairy-tale narrative in which God's name is never mentioned. Most observers take the gap at Qumran as a verdict on the book. Alter allows that no scrap of it may simply have survived.

So the day belongs to a name whose own book vanished from the collection where every other book of the Hebrew Bible turned up. The name itself is stranger still.

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ORIGINS

Esther Day history

INTRODUCTION

The woman the book is named for does not begin as Esther. She arrives as Hadassah, and the verse introduces her twice over, as "Hadassah, that is, Esther." Only the second name is the one history kept.

The name works as a disguise inside the story too. Twice the book stops to note that she kept her origins to herself. "Esther did not reveal her people or her kindred," it says, and it says so again later.

CHAPTER 01

A name that means hiding

Centuries on, the rabbis asked a blunt question: where is Esther hinted at in the Torah? Rav Mattana answered with a verb rather than a person. He pointed to the line in Deuteronomy where God says haster astir, I will surely hide my face.

CHAPTER 02

Into English, and into America

The name traveled west with the Bible. Behind the Name records that it has been used in the English-speaking world since the Protestant Reformation, sometimes in the alternative Latin form Hester. American parents then took it up in numbers the federal record can still measure.

CHAPTER 03

The White House baby

On a September day in 1893, Frances Cleveland gave birth inside the White House. The White House Historical Association records her as the only first lady to give birth to a child there. The baby was named Esther.

In the federal name data, the share of American girls given the name jumped by roughly two thirds that year, and it kept climbing. Behind the Name credits the birth for the boost, and the record is at least consistent with that reading.

CHAPTER 04

A date with no paper trail

The day itself is the thinnest part of the story. A full-text search of the Federal Register returns nothing under this name, and no primary record says who placed it on June 12. Go looking for its origin and you land instead on August 3, the birthday Esther Grace Earl asked people to spend telling each other they love them.

TIMELINE

Timeline

First national count of the name

The opening year of federal name records lists 198 American girls named Esther, ranking it 104th.

A daughter born in the White House

Frances Cleveland gives birth to a daughter named Esther inside the White House.

The name's highest American rank

Esther reaches 27th among American girls' names, the strongest position it has ever held.

The weakest year on record

The name slips to 348th, its lowest rank in the entire national series, and still inside the top thousand.

The name climbs back

Esther returns to 119th among American girls' names, its best rank since 1939.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Esther Day by the Numbers

146
Esther's unbroken years in US top 1,000
271,234
US girls named Esther since 1880
6,574
Girls named Esther in 1918, its peak

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Esther Day Matters

STAKES

A book about hiding turns on the decision to speak.

Mordecai's warning to Esther is the hinge of the whole book. If she keeps silent in this crisis, he tells her, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, and perhaps she reached her royal position for just such a crisis.

FESTIVAL

The book wrote its own holiday into itself

Esther 9 has Mordecai send dispatches charging the Jews to keep the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar every year. It sets them as days of feasting, with gifts sent to one another and presents to the poor.

ORIGINS

Scholars still split over what the name means

Behind the Name gives two readings and declines to choose between them, the Old Persian word for star or a derivative of the Near Eastern goddess Ishtar. A name day for Esther is therefore a day for a word whose meaning was never settled.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Esther Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Read the Book of Esther straight through

Sefaria carries the Hebrew and the English of the book side by side. Read it once and the concealment running through the story becomes hard to miss.

LOOK

Look up the name in federal records

The Social Security Administration publishes a count of every American name given to at least five babies in a year. Find the year you were born and see where Esther sat.

WRITE

Write the name in its older alphabets

Behind the Name gives the Hebrew as אֶסְתֵר and the ancient Greek as Ἐσθήρ. Copying either out is a small way to sit with a name that has traveled a long way.

ASK

Ask an older Esther how she got her name

The federal tables can tell you how many girls received the name in any given year. They cannot tell you why one family chose it, and an older Esther can.

LOOK

Look up the youngest Nobel economics laureate

The Nobel Foundation names Esther Duflo its youngest economics laureate, awarded at the age of 46. She shared the 2019 prize for an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Esther Day?

1 / 8

What name does the Book of Esther give her first?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing found, so offices, banks and schools keep normal hours. A full-text search of the US Federal Register returns no document naming it.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

12sources
8primary records
3independently dated
Primary records
Sefaria
Esther 2:7 (JPS Tanakh, Gender-Sensitive Edition)
The verse that introduces the biblical figure under two names, as Hadassah, that is, Esther, and records that Mordecai raised her as his own daughter.
View source
Sefaria
Chullin 139b (Talmud, William Davidson Edition)
The Talmudic exchange in which Rav Mattana is asked where the Torah alludes to Esther and answers with the phrase haster astir, a verb of hiding.
View source
Sefaria
Esther 9:20-22 (JPS Tanakh, Gender-Sensitive Edition)
The passage in which Mordecai's dispatches establish an annual festival on the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar, with feasting, gifts to one another and presents to the poor.
View source
Sefaria
Deuteronomy 31:18 (JPS Tanakh, Gender-Sensitive Edition)
The verse carrying the Hebrew phrase haster astir panai, rendered as a promise to keep the divine countenance hidden, which the Talmud reads against the name Esther.
View source
US Social Security Administration
Popular Baby Names: Beyond the Top 1000 Names
The federal dataset of annual counts for every US given name recorded at least five times in a year, by sex, covering 1880 onward, and the source of every figure on this page about the name's American use.
View source
NobelPrize.org
Esther Duflo, Facts, 2019
The Nobel Foundation's own record of Duflo's 2019 award in economic sciences, its citation for an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, and her affiliation at the time.
View source
NobelPrize.org
Facts on the Prize in Economic Sciences
The Nobel Foundation's statistical summary of the economics prize, which names Esther Duflo as its youngest laureate, awarded at the age of 46.
View source
Federal Register2026
Federal Register document search API, term National Esther Day
A full-text search of US federal documents returning no result for this observance.
View source
Additional coverage
London Review of Books12 September 2013
Robert Alter, 'Where's Esther?'
An essay reporting that roughly nine hundred manuscripts from Qumran held portions of every canonical book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, that the book never mentions God's name, and that the reason for the gap remains an inference rather than a settled finding.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Esther
An etymological reference giving the competing derivations of the name from Old Persian for star and from the goddess Ishtar, its Hebrew and ancient Greek spellings, Hadassah as the original name, its use in English since the Protestant Reformation in the Latin form Hester, and a popularity rise following the birth of Esther Cleveland.
View source
White House Historical Association
Frances Cleveland
The association's biography of the first lady, recording that she is the only first lady to have given birth to a child at the White House and that the child, born in 1893, was named Esther.
View source
The Boston Globe3 August 2018
John Green tweets greetings for Happy Esther Day
Coverage establishing that Esther Day is an unofficial observance marked each August 3, the birthday of Esther Grace Earl, arising from her own request that people use the day to tell those close to them that they love them.
View source
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