Astoria is linked to Greek astor and star-like imagery, and is also known as an aristocratic place and surname name.
Astoria carries the weight of American aristocracy and Gilded Age ambition in its very syllables. The name derives from the surname Astor, brought to prominence by John Jacob Astor (1763–1848), the German-born fur trader and real estate magnate who became the wealthiest person in the United States at the time of his death. The Astor surname itself traces back to a Germanic root meaning "hawk," a bird long associated with nobility and keen vision.
Astor established a dynasty whose name would be stamped across American geography: Astoria, Oregon — founded as a fur trading post in 1811, the first permanent American settlement on the Pacific coast — and the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York, both bear the family's imprint. The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, opened in New York City in 1893, cemented Astoria as a byword for opulent luxury. Edith Wharton, the novelist of Gilded Age society, inhabited the same social universe the Astors defined, and the name echoes through that world of old money and elaborate social ritual.
In literary and popular culture, Astoria has appeared as a setting suggesting sophistication, mystery, and old-world grandeur — from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island imaginings to contemporary fiction. As a given name, Astoria is a rare and romantic choice that has attracted growing interest among parents seeking something historically rich yet unconventional.
Its -ia ending aligns it with a family of place-name feminizations — Savannah, Alexandria, Venetia — that feel at once grand and wearable. To name a child Astoria is to invoke ambition, beauty, and a distinctly American mythology of aspiration.