Hestia is the Greek goddess of hearth and home, and her name is tied to the hearth itself.
Hestia descends directly from the ancient Greek word *hestia*, meaning "hearth" — the sacred fire at the center of both home and city that was never allowed to go out. In the Greek pantheon she was the firstborn child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and therefore also the last to be disgorged when Zeus freed his siblings, making her simultaneously the eldest and youngest of the Olympians. Unlike her siblings, Hestia renounced marriage and conflict, remaining a virgin goddess whose domain was the inward and sustaining: warmth, domestic peace, the sacred obligation of hospitality.
Her cult was quiet but pervasive. Every Greek household maintained a hearth fire in her honor, and every public building kept a communal flame. When Greek colonists founded new cities, they carried fire from the mother city's Hestia to light the hearth of the new one — an act that made her a goddess of civic continuity as much as domestic warmth.
The Romans absorbed her into their own pantheon as Vesta, whose Vestal Virgins maintained the eternal flame of Rome for over a thousand years. For centuries Hestia faded as a given name, surviving mainly in scholarship and myth. The twentieth century's revival of classical mythology in literature and popular culture — from Robert Graves's retellings to the *Percy Jackson* series — returned many Olympian names to public affection, and Hestia has risen steadily since the 2010s. Parents are drawn to its combination of genuine antiquity, a gentle-sounding form, and a meaning — home, warmth, belonging — that feels aspirational rather than archaic.