The word Easter is derived from the Old English word Eostre. This itself is thought to be the name of a pagan goddess, Eostre to the Anglo-Saxons and Ostara in old High German, probably a variant of a much older goddess from the ancient Indo-European cultures. It used to be thought that she might be a variant of Ishtar from the Babylonian culture, but there is no real evidence of this.
There are a lot of myths associated with the idea of Easter, but most of them are hard to prove, such as the belief that eggs, hares etc are in some way connected with the old pagan festival. In fact very little is known about Eostre or similar figures from the same era. The Christian festival began to be celebrated around the second century AD in some countries and was probably originally linked to the Jewish festival of Passover.