Humanverse

Isabel vs Isaura

American parents have registered 133,977 Isabels since 1880, against 1,520 Isauras. Isabel is still ahead, with 1,746 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Isabel against Isaura, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Isabel Isaura

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

Isabel has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1983, when Isabel had 445 and Isaura had 44.

Side by side

  Isabel Isaura
Total US births 133,9771,520
Most in one year 4,01963
Babies in 2025 1,74614
Estimated living today 104,0001,400
Median age today 2129
Peak year 20062007
Best rank 87th girls2,858th girls
Rank in 2025 176th7,491st
First recorded 18801916
Girls / boys 132,150 / 1,8271,520 / 0

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 Isauras alive today are over 29; half the Isabels are over 21. That is 8 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 Isabel Isaura
England and Wales 21,16615
France 4,035375
Belgium 365353

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: Isabel and Isaura.