Estelle is a French name from the Old Occitan estela, which means "star", the same root as Stella; it was spread by a 13th-century saint of southern France and by Estelle in Dickens's Great Expectations, where it appears as Estella. Actress Estelle Getty of The Golden Girls is a well-known American bearer. In the United States Estelle climbed from number 2438 in 2000 into the top 1000 in 2012 and reaches number 573 among girls' names in 2025, its best rank in this century.