Humanverse

Isabel vs Ysabel

American parents have registered 133,977 Isabels since 1880, against 1,723 Ysabels. Isabel is still ahead, with 1,746 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Isabel Ysabel

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 1930, when Isabel had 628 and Ysabel had 32.

Side by side

  Isabel Ysabel
Total US births 133,9771,723
Most in one year 4,01951
Babies in 2025 1,74622
Estimated living today 104,0001,200
Median age today 2122
Peak year 20061998
Best rank 87th girls2,651st girls
Rank in 2025 176th5,554th
First recorded 18801897
Girls / boys 132,150 / 1,8271,498 / 225

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.

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 Ysabel
England and Wales 21,166120
France 4,03560

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 Ysabel.