Sometimes you come across claims that are so silly you wonder if it's even worth arguing against. But you also know that people not familiar with such things may fall for it, so you want to put out a correction anyway. And here I will tackle the claim by some groups that the celebration of Easter is based on the pagan goddess Ishtar (and therefore pagan itself) due to the similarity in their pronunciation.
The first problem with this is that the original writing of Easter, as we see in Old English writings, had the e and r reversed. Here are some examples we see from the Oxford English Dictionary:
Ælfric De Temporibus Anni (Cambr. Gg.3.28) (2009) iv. 84 On sumon geare bið se mona twelf siðon geniwod, fram ðære halgan eastertide oð eft eastron.
Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Laud) anno 1101 To Cristesmæssan heold se cyng Heanrig his hired on Westmynstre & to Eastranon Winceastre.
MS Trin. Cambr. in R. Morris Old Eng. Homilies (1873) 2nd Ser. 101 (MED) Þe þre dage biforen estre [ben] cleped swidages.
Laȝamon Brut (Calig.) (1978) l. 9230 He ferde to Lunden. He wes þere an Æstre.
Obviously, the spellings weren't exactly standardized, but we can clearly see that we were seeing an R immediately after the T, not an E. So even appealing to a supposed similarity in pronunciation doesn't work very well, because the original pronunciation would have been eastre rather than easter. Clearly, "re" makes a rather different sound than "er". Some modern British spellings do pronounce a -re as -er, such as theatre being pronounced as theater, but to my understanding this pronunciation oddity (like English pronunciation oddities in general) came about much later in English, and thus Eastre would have still have a pronunciation rather different from Ishtar.
So even if the word Easter sounds kind of like Ishtar now, it did not originally--and that throws an axe in the idea that the word was derived from Ishtar. Certainly, words can end up sounding different when brought from one language to another, but as there is no actual proof of Easter being taken from Ishtar outside of their phonological similarity, that means that even the phonological similarity falls when one examines the original way Easter was written.
That already poses a big problem for this hypothesis. But claims of the Easter holiday being related to Ishtar due to Easter and Ishtar sounding similar fall apart even more when one looks beyond English. Let's look at how Easter is written in various languages.
Dutch: Pasen
German: Ostern
Italian: Pasqua
Portuguese: Páscoa
Spanish: Pascua
As we can see, in most languages, Easter isn't written anything like it is in English, and instead starts with a "Pas" sound. Easter sounding like it does in English is limited to only the Germanic languages like English or German, as the term Germanic implies (and even in German, "Ostern" is noticeably different from Ishtar). Other languages have stuck closer to the original Hebrew term of פסחא for Easter (pronounced Pskha). Indeed, this root form is still found in English in the word paschal, which means to be related to Easter.
A claim by those who are slightly smarter might be to point out that the English word of Easter may be derived from Eostre, the name of a pagan goddess apparently associated with spring. I say slightly smarter because while even if that was the origin of the English word Easter, which it may not have been (our only source for this claim is a writer named Bede mentioning it in passing, and there is no proof anywhere else this goddess ever existed), it still doesn't matter. Why? Because English as a language didn't exist until centuries after Easter was a known and celebrated holiday. So even if this etymology is true, one cannot conclude any pagan influence on the Easter holiday itself based on it. Furthermore, it should be noted that this supposed derivation, even if true, may have been indirect. It is not clear (from what I can tell) whether Bede said that Easter was named after Eostre, or whether it was named after Eosturmonath, which was named after Eostre. So even if Bede's claim about Eostre is correct, Easter may not have been named after Eostre, but named after a month that was supposedly named after Eostre, giving no more of a direct name than "Fourth of July" does to Julius Caesar.
Some have attempted to still connect this to Ishtar (or Astarte) by claiming that Eostre was just the English version of that deity. But this is simply complete speculation. But even if it is true, we still have the same problem noted above, that this name came after the holiday had already been created and celebrated.
As should be obvious at this point, the claim that the holiday Easter has anything to do with Ishtar or even Eostre due to sounding similar simply does not add up. This similarity only exists in English (and to a more limited extent German), languages that only existed well after the holiday was already being celebrated. The languages people did use back then were Greek and Aramaic, and the words for Easter and Ishtar in those languages sounded nothing alike. It's a claim so blatantly false that it shouldn't even need refutation, but as noted sometimes you have to point out the errors in even the weakest claims to make sure no one falls for them.
As long as I'm at it: "Luck" and "Lucifer" are other words that you might see a few people claim are related. However, it is complete coincidence that they sound similar at all in English. The origin of "Luck" in English comes from German, and the origin of "Lucifer" in English comes from Latin. And just like Easter and Ishtar, as soon as you slip into another language the similarity completely disappears. For example, in Spanish the words are "Suerte" and "Lucifer," which sound nothing at all alike.
For a more in-depth examination, you may read this follow-up post.
(updated 7-5-20)
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