Isabel
About 133,977 American babies have been named Isabel since 1880, most of them around 2006. In 2025 it ranked 176th. About 104,000 Isabels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 21.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Isabel boys named Isabel
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 133,977
- Estimated living today
- 104,000
- Median age today
- 21
- Peak year
- 2006
- Best rank
- 87th
- Rank in 2025
- 176th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 132,150 / 1,827
How old the living Isabels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 133,977 babies given the name since 1880, about 104,000 are alive — 78 in every hundred. Roughly 40,000 of them are children and 7,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2004 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Hebrew
From Spanish Isabel, from Old Occitan Elisabel, from Latin Elisabeth, from Ancient Greek Ἐλισάβετ, from Hebrew אֱלִישֶׁבַע (“my God is an oath”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Isabels
- Isabel Allende (born 1942)Chilean writer
- Isabel Martínez de Perón (born 1931)first female president of Argentina from 1974 to 1976
- Isabel of Aragon (1470–1498)queen consort of Portugal
- Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil (1846–1921)Princess Imperial of the Empire of Brazil
- Isabel Lucas (born 1985)Australian actress and model
- Isabel Coixet (born 1960)Spanish film director and screenwriter
- Queen Maria Isabel of Spain (1797–1818)Queen consort of Spain
- Isabel dos Santos (born 1973)Angolan businesswoman
People named Isabel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Isabel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Isabel is most concentrated in New Mexico (3.3×), Arizona (2.3×), California (2.0×), Nevada (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2006
The most popular girls’ names the year Isabel peaked:
Isabel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Isabel | 21,166 | 45th |
| Italy girls | Isabel | 17,184 | — |
| Spain girls | Isabel | 17,005 | 34th |
| France girls | Isabel | 4,035 | 168th |
| Ireland girls | Isabel | 2,029 | 59th |
| Norway girls | Isabel | 1,819 | 81st |
| Switzerland girls | Isabel | 883 | 165th |
| New Zealand girls | Isabel | 543 | 64th |
| Scotland girls | Isabel | 487 | 196th |
| Belgium girls | Isabel | 365 | 383rd |
| Poland girls | Isabel | 162 birth registrations | 260th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Isabel | 111 | 180th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Isabel: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Isabel | 622 | 0.050% | 158th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Isabel | 120 | 0.028% | 204th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Isabel | 140 | 0.215% | 26th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Isabel | 1 | 0.027% | 10th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Isabel is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.21% of children were given it – 130 of them.
Isabel: rank by region
In 2025, Isabel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Isabel | 450 | 11 |
In 2024, Isabel was among the 10 most common names in 3 regions of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Isabel | 7 | 2 |
| Provincia Autonoma di Trento | Isabel | 7 | 29 |
| Campania | Isabel | 8 | 380 |
In 2023, Isabel was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Śląskie | Isabel | 250 | 2 |
In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Isabel appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (342nd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Isabel by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 100 | 136th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Isabel among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Isabel | 5,518 | 9,010 |
| Finland girls | Isabel | 950 | 3,108 |
| the Netherlands boys | Isabel | — | 16 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Isabel lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 237,075 women called Isabel were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jaén | Isabel | 5,809 | 18.608 | 9 |
| Badajoz | Isabel | 6,159 | 18.277 | 5 |
| Albacete | Isabel | 3,452 | 17.736 | 3 |
| Almería | Isabel | 6,449 | 17.096 | 4 |
| Cádiz | Isabel | 10,297 | 16.069 | 7 |
| Murcia | Isabel | 11,780 | 14.872 | 6 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Isabel against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.