Short answers, pulled from the story.
Scholars have debated the true origin of Inanna's name since the first cuneiform tablets were unearthed in the late 19th century. The word appears to derive from a Proto-Euphratean root, suggesting she may have been worshipped before Sumerian became the dominant language of southern Iraq.
During the reign of Sargon of Akkad, these two formerly separate entities became so extensively syncretized that they were regarded as effectively the same goddess under two different names. This conflation occurred when the Akkadian version of her name, Ishtar, was used alongside the Sumerian name Inanna across Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia.
Individuals who practiced gender nonconformity were heavily involved in the cult of Inanna, performing elegies and lamentations in temples dedicated to her. Men who became gala priests sometimes adopted female names, and their songs were composed in the Sumerian dialect reserved for female speech.
The eight-pointed star served as Inanna's most common symbol throughout Mesopotamian history. On boundary stones and cylinder seals, the star appears alongside the crescent moon of Sin and the rayed solar disk of Shamash.
In Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, she descends into the netherworld and returns to the heavens unlike any other deity. The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent setting in the West then rising again in the East, which modern astrologers recognize as an astronomical phenomenon associated with retrograde Venus.