What is "estelle"

Estelle may refer to:

Estelle Fanta Swaray (born 18 January 1980), simply known as Estelle, is a British singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress from West London, England. Estelle is known for her eclectic mix of various musical genres including R&B, soul, reggae, grime, hip hop and dance. She has experienced mainstream success with the single " American Boy" featuring Kanye West, reaching number 1 in the United Kingdom and her collaboration with David Guetta in " One Love".

Estelle has released several critically acclaimed records and received a Grammy Award among other accolades. She is known for her collaborations with artists including John Legend, Robin Thicke, Rick Ross, Chris Brown, will.i.am and Kanye West. Since 2013, she has voiced the character Garnet in the animated TV series Steven Universe.

Estelle is a hamlet in the Cévennes region of France in the peripheral zone of a national park. It has a population of around twenty permanent residents and twenty holiday homes. Estelle is old French for "star". The village belongs to the commune of Arrigas. The closest sizeable town is Le Vigan, capital town of Cévennes.

Estelle is a female given name whose immediate origin is French, and for which the generally accepted meaning is star.

Saint Estelle was a martyr who purportedly lived in Aquitania in the third century AD although the earliest references to her date from the Middle Ages; the earliest formats of this Saint's name: Eustella/Eustelle and Eustalia, obviously morphed into Estelle due to association with estela: Occitan for star, of which Estelle is essentially a phonetic rendering, and star is the meaning generally assigned the name Estelle, although the format Eustalia suggests the name's true root is the Greek eustales: well-groomed. Despite the reported popularity of the saint the name Estelle was afforded little evident usage prior to the publication in 1788 of the pastoral Estelle by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian: the first famous historical namesake: Estelle Fornier (née Dubœuf), muse of the composer Berlioz, was born in 1797. Best-known overall in France due to model Estelle Lefébure (b.1966), the name Estelle has proven substantially more popular in Belgium than France.

Estelle came into vogue in the British Isles in the mid-19th century likely as a variant of the similar Stella which had recently become fashionable: Estelle was also in effect promoted via utilization by a number of novelists who wrote in English, most notably by Charles Dickens in variant form for the character Estella Havisham in his novel Great Expectations published in August 1961 after being serialized weekly from December 1860 with Estella being introduced in Chapter 8 on 19 January 1861. The general scholarly consensus is that in choosing Estella as the name of the remote love object of his novel's focal character: Pip - whose full given name is Philip - , Dickens was evoking Sir Philip Sidney's poetic wooing of the unattainable Stella in Astrophel and Stella (1591). Several other widely-read authors of the day gave the name Estelle to major characters in their novels, Catherine Gore in Romances of Real Life as early as 1829 although most examples date from mid-century, such as Annie Edwards in Creeds (1859), E.D.E.N. Southworth in The Lady of the Isle (1859), and Augusta Jane Evans in St. Elmo (1866).

Estelle and Estella remained popular from roughly 1880 to 1930, with a marked decline in usage since 1960. Estelle has overall been more popular in the United States than in the British Isles, with there being at least two prominent American namesakes: writer Estelle Anna Lewis (1824-1880) and society woman Estelle Skidmore Doremus (1830-1905), who significantly predate the name's mid-19th century British vogue.

Estelle is also used as an alternative form of Esther.

Footnote

The newborn Princess' parents Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Prince Daniel chose their daughter's names in consultation with King Carl Gustaf: in announcing the Princess' given name the King termed Estelle "a name which is very close to the heart of the Princess [Victoria] and also the family." It was widely speculated that to honor World War II hero Count Folke Bernadotte - great-great-uncle and godfather to King Carl Gustaf - the newborn Princess was named after the Count's wife: the former Estelle Manville of Westchester County , an idea endorsed by Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg, longtime Stockholm Palace spokeswoman: (quote) "The Crown Princess was always interested in matters relating to ending conflict...Folke Bernadotte in that area was a pioneer." However this has not been confirmed by any member of the Swedish Royal Family.

The name Estelle made headlines in February 2012 when King Carl Gustaf of Sweden announced Estelle as the given name chosen for his newborn grand-daughter - see Princess Estelle, Duchess of Östergötland - , news which the Daily Mail reported under the banner She's already a star! referencing the standard interpretation of Estelle as star. The choice of a French name with only a peripheral profile in Sweden - a 2012 year-end tally would estimate that a total of 663 Swedish residents bore the given name Estelle - touched off a flurry of media debate with writer Herman Lindqvist, who has acted as a historical consultant to the Swedish Royal Family, expressing the extreme negative position thus: "Totally unexpected and inappropriate...No name for a future ruler...Estelle sounds like the name of a nightclub queen". Conversely top Scandinavian royalty pundit Kjell Arne Totland ( no) reacted positively, calling Estelle "a very nice name, rich in tradition yet modern".