Isabella

309,067 people in America carry this name — ranked #164 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it ih zuh BEH luh

4 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

IH2 Z AH0 B EH1 L AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 309,067 2020 Census
  • Rank #164 Common
  • Per 100,000 102.3 about 1 in 1,072 people
  • As a surname 1,076 ranked #24,261 the other way round

What Isabella means and where it comes from

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “oath of Baal”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Isabella through the years

361,449 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2010, with 22,954 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Isabella

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Isabella Ashley — runs together
  • Isabella Amy — runs together
  • Isabella Anna — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

On the way up

Isabella is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

Is Isabella used for boys or for girls?

0.1% men
308,625 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The same name elsewhere

  • Isabel Span.|Eng.|Port
  • Izabela Polish
  • Isabeau French
  • Izabella Hungarian
  • Isabelle French
  • Isabelinha Portuguese

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Spellings of Isabella

Isabella is how 60% of them spell it — 512,903 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 46.8%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 2.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 41.9%
  • Two or more races — 5.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.9%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Where the name Isabella is most common in the US

In Nevada the name is given 2.0 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Nevada ×2.0
  • Florida ×1.8
  • Arizona ×1.5
  • Rhode Island ×1.4
  • Delaware ×1.3

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Try it First-Year Costs

Open First-Year Costs on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin