Humanverse

Isaac vs Isabella

American parents have registered 417,454 Isabellas since 1880, against 332,292 Isaacs. Isabella is still ahead, with 10,666 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Isaac against Isabella, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Isaac Isabella

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Isaac for 121 years and Isabella for 25 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Isaac Isabella
Total US births 332,292417,454
Most in one year 10,28722,966
Babies in 2025 5,96310,666
Estimated living today 300,000406,000
Median age today 1714
Peak year 20072010
Best rank 41st boys1st girls
Rank in 2025 47th7th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 784 / 331,508417,001 / 453

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Isaacs alive today are over 17; half the Isabellas are over 14. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Isaac Isabella
England and Wales 50,46060,512
France 29,6051,850
Italy 56815,056
Spain 11,0562,201
New Zealand 4,7705,236
Scotland 1,9762,532
Ireland 1,6712,731
Norway 5382,288
Belgium 2,107576
Northern Ireland 1,4411,198
Switzerland 1,0391,196
Poland 37718

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Isaac and Isabella.