What Is In The Name

“What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Selama ini nggak pernah tahu arti nama saya selain sama seperti nama kitab di Perjanjian Lama. Dan nggak berusaha untuk cari tahu juga. Sampai akhirnya Jumat malam kemarin waktu ikut persiapan ngajar Sunday School karena topiknya tentang ratu Ester.

Dalam bahasa Persia, Ester artinya bintang. Wuihhh....nggak nyangka sama sekali. Itukah sebabnya saya suka lihatin awan? *cari korelasi antara awan sama bintang*. Sedangkan dalam bahasa Yahudi padanan katanya adalah Hadasa yang artinya pohon murad. Pohon murad adalah tanaman Palestina yang tingginya bisa mencapai 10m sementara daun dan bunganya bisa untuk bahan wangi-wangian.

Dan saya beneran terkesima bin takjub waktu tahu artinya. Karena sejujurnya, saya nggak begitu suka sama nama depan saya. Entahlah...mungkin karena cara orang manggil atau pemenggalan katanya yang terasa nggak pernah pas. Itu sebabnya dari jaman SD dulu saya berharap orang panggil saya dengan 3 huruf terakhir dari nama kedua dan itu baru kejadian pas kuliah.

Di dokumen penting, ada 2 versi penulisan nama saya. Ada dokumen yang nulisnya Esther Octavia (kalau nggak salah di surat baptis) sementara di dokumen lain tertera Ester Oktavia. Versi yang pertama sempat dipakai selama SD sebelum akhirnya ganti ke versi kedua. Lupa alasannya. Dan yang bener yang mana pun nggak tahu karena mama juga lupa :).

Ini hasil copy paste dari wikipedia:

Origin and meaning of the name Esther

It has been conjectured that the name Esther is derived from a reconstructed Median word astra meaning myrtle.^[7]
An alternative view is that Esther is derived from the theonym Ishtar. The Book of Daniel provides accounts of Jews in exile being assigned names relating to Babylonian gods and "Mordecai" is understood to mean servant of Marduk, a Babylonian god. "Esther" may have been a different Hebrew interpretation from the Proto-Semitic root "star/'morning/evening star'",^[8] which descended with the /th/ into the Ugaritic Athtiratu^[9] and Arabian Athtar.^[10] The derivation must then have been secondary for the initial ayin to be confused with an aleph (both represented by vowels in Akkadian), and the second consonant descended as a /s/ (like in the Aramaic asthr "bright star"), rather than a /sh/ as in Hebrew and most commonly in Akkadian.
Wilson, who identified Ahasuerus with Xerxes I and Vashti with Amestris, suggested that both "Amestris" and "Esther" derived from Akkadian Ammi-Ishtar or Ummi-Ishtar.^[11] Hoschander alternatively suggested Ishtar-udda-sha ("Ishtar is her light") as the origin with the possibility of -udda-sha being connected with the similarly sounding Hebrew name Hadassah. These names however remain unattested in sources, and come from the original Babylonian Empire from 2000 BCE,^{[citation needed]} not the Chaldean Empire or Persian Empire of the Book of Esther.^{[citation needed]}
The Targum^[12] connects the name with the Persian word for "star", ستاره setareh, explaining that Esther was so named for being as beautiful as the Morning Star. In the Talmud (Tractate Yoma 29a), Esther is compared to the "morning star", and is considered the subject of Psalm 22, because its introduction is a "song for the morning star".

Crepe Myrtle - salah satu jenis pohon murad/myrtle
sumber: http://arborwest.com.au/trees/deciduous/crepe-myrtle/

Jadi inget penggalan lagunya Padi - tetaplah menjadi bintang di langit...