Estella

About Estella

Estella is a name meaning star, with a three-syllable form related to Estelle and Stella. Its most enduring literary association is Estella in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. A much newer screen connection comes from Disney's Cruella, where Estella is the young designer who becomes the title character.

Meaning and name family

Estella is a Latinate form of Estelle. The French name comes ultimately from Latin stella, meaning star, giving the family a clear celestial root.

Estelle and Stella are close alternatives with shorter spoken forms. Spanish and Portuguese Estela and the familiar form Estelita belong to the wider international family.

Essie is an established shortening. It keeps the name's opening while replacing the fuller ending with the familiar ee sound.

The extra final a distinguishes Estella from Estelle. It adds a syllable and gives the complete name a different rhythm while preserving the same older meaning.

Estella in Great Expectations

In Dickens's Great Expectations, the orphan Pip meets Estella at Miss Havisham's house and falls in love with her. She becomes central to his desires and his ideas about the kind of life he wants.

Estella is Miss Havisham's ward, and her beauty and emotional distance form part of Pip's difficult education. His attachment to her develops alongside his wish to leave his humble background and become a gentleman.

The novel connects her name with questions of class, aspiration, disappointment, and the difference between imagined happiness and lived experience. That makes Estella more than a decorative name in the book.

For later readers, the character supplies a strong nineteenth-century literary association. The full name remains recognizable through editions and adaptations of the novel.

Estella in Cruella

The 2021 film Cruella gives Estella a different fictional setting. Played by Emma Stone, she is a young designer trying to establish herself in the fashion world of 1970s London.

Her talent catches the attention of the Baroness von Hellman, and their relationship helps drive her transformation into Cruella. The story uses clothing, performance, and competing creative identities as central elements.

This Estella belongs to a film origin story rather than to Dickens's Victorian novel. The shared name links two memorable fictional women without making the characters themselves part of the same story.

Pronunciation

Estella is es-TEL-uh in English, with three syllables and stress in the middle. The final vowel is unstressed.

Estelle ends at the stressed syllable, while Stella begins directly with the st sound. Estella keeps both the opening vowel and the final a, making it the longest of those three familiar forms.

American popularity

Estella's best American girls' rank was 106 in 1883. Its largest annual count came in 1921, with 638 births.

Use declined to 67 births in 2000 before rising again. In 2025, 581 girls received the name, ranking 509. Its recent increase has brought it close to its earlier peak count, although its modern rank remains lower than its nineteenth-century high point.

How popular is Estella?

In 2025, Estella ranked #509 among girls in the United States, with 581 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 638 in 1921. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.