Easter...Eostre...Ishtar?

Easter (still called Passover by almost all non-English-speakers) is a paganized "strange fire" version of Passover and, in my opinion, nobody should be celebrating it as such.

However, this post is about the name, and not the date or the method.

I have yet to see any credible evidence that the word "Easter" has any connection to the word "Ishtar". If I recall correctly, a single, short statement by Bede, made long after the described festivals of Eostre had disappeared, is the sum total of evidence for that claim. And he didn't even claim that the Angles had renamed "Passover" to "Easter". He actually wrote that they had named a month after the goddess many centuries before and, since Passover was observed in that month, the name of the month had come to stand for the feast.

Maybe Eostre was the name of a pagan goddess and maybe it wasn't. The weekday names that we inherited from those people are definitely derived from pagan gods, so it seems likely that they followed the same pattern in naming the months. However, we aren't renaming our national holiday after Julius Caesar when we call it "July 4th" instead of "Independence Day," so the use of "Easter" as a label for "Passover" isn't in itself proof that the Angles renamed Passover in honor of a pagan deity or merged the feast of Eostre with the feast of Passover. It's much more likely that they took the entire adulterated Passover package directly from the Roman missionaries who had already hopelessly confused its observance with their own pagan religions.

I'd love to see an ancient manuscript, carving, or...something...dating from 500 that says "The Germanic peoples worship a deity they call Eostre, which is their version of the Greek Aphrodite and the Babylonian Ishtar and they now combine the feast of this goddess with that of Passover." But I don't think such a thing exists. A single statement hundreds of years removed from the event is worthless as evidence. Until such evidence is produced, all we have is speculation.

If you are judging someone based on their use of a pagan-derived month name while you continue to use pagan-derived day names, and if you are judging someone based on speculation without hard evidence...then you probably have bigger problems than they do.

And if your best reply to my skepticism is "Ditch the lies!!1! Stop worshiping Constantine!!!", then I'm just going to ignore you. If you have actual, primary source evidence, I welcome it. If you don't, then...are you claiming to be a prophet with divine knowledge of the past?

Update: Here's the original and only historical source for "Easter" coming from the name of a pagan goddess:

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 rithe by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

Bede, The Reckoning of Time, "Chapter 15, The English Months"

Easter in a Few Other Languages

Pazko
Paske
Pasques
Paskha
Pascoa
Pasti
Pasg
Paskah
Pashke
Pasen
Pasqua

The exact languages aren't the point. The point is that only Germanic peoples and their converts use the name "Easter".

The rest of the world is fully aware that Easter is a counterfeit Passover. They didn't even bother changing the name.