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Girls' name · 139,260 recorded births

Isabel

#176 in the US in 2025

Where Isabel stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#176girls’ names · US 2025

Isabel was the 176th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 1,746 births.

peak 2006 · 4,009188019532025

Its moment was 2006, when 4,009 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#176US rank, 2025 (girls)
1,746US births in 2025
#83its best US rank, in 2003
2006peak year — 4,009 births
132,150US births since 1880
2,953NZ births since 1900
2,330E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Isabel's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Isabel was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Isabel in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0105211
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Isabel in the United States, 1880–2025
girlsboys

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Isabel in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Isabel has been registered 2,953 times since 1900, peaking in 2009 with 59 births. It ranked #120 for girls in 2025 on 33 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0243486
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Isabel in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Isabel in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Isabel was registered 2,330 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2021 with 374 births. It ranked #184 for girls in 2025 on 271 births.

20200.068136
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Isabel in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#16181
1890#185160
1900#184286
1910#176389
1920#199992
1930#257595
1940#359328
1950#421362
1960#492391
1970#483415
1980#435496
1990#339785
2000#943,448
2010#1162,658
2020#1571,771

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Isabel most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California24,875
Texas17,756
New York10,000
Illinois5,856
Florida5,070
Pennsylvania4,963
Arizona3,560
Massachusetts3,552
New Jersey3,395
Michigan2,847

Questions about Isabel

How popular is the name Isabel?

Isabel ranked #176 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 1,746 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Isabel most popular?

Isabel peaked in 2006, when 4,009 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Isabel rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Isabel has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2006, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.