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Help[Facts] Re: Popularity of Isabel prior to 1900
Can anyone tell me about the popularity of the names Isabel or Isabelle in the United States prior to 1900? I was going through some ancestral records of my mothers and came across a woman born in 1863 named Mary Isabel. I read that the name Isabel is Spanish. (?) We have no hispanic ancestors that we know of. Should we find it unusual that a caucasian woman from the Southern US was named Isabel in the 1880s? Would this name have mostly been used by people with hispanic origins or by others as well? What if her name had been spelled Isabelle? More unusual? Less unusual? Thanks for your help!!
MJ
MJ
1
Replies
Isabel was originally a Spanish form of Elizabeth but it was imported into France in the early Middle Ages and then into England soon after so it was routinely used amongst English speakers centuries later in the 1800's. In the late Middle Ages it was the same name as Elizabeth here in England and you'll find records where a woman was baptised Elizabeth, married as Isabel, inherited property in both names and was buried as Elizabeth with a death record listing Isabel. They used to have law cases here to decide if names were one and the same or separate and eventually the two became distinct.
US Records prior to 1900 were sometimes poorly kept, sometimes lost due to natural disasters and didn't share our modern concern with statistics. The name base was much smaller so a name in the top 10 then tended to stay there for decades and be shared by a large chunk of the population. The Latinate form Isabella was popular here in England in the 1700's and the use of Isabel as a variant of Elizabeth had been well-established by that time. So Isabel on a Caucasian woman in the 1860's doesn't indicate anything unusual - she was one of many at the time.
cheers
Devon
US Records prior to 1900 were sometimes poorly kept, sometimes lost due to natural disasters and didn't share our modern concern with statistics. The name base was much smaller so a name in the top 10 then tended to stay there for decades and be shared by a large chunk of the population. The Latinate form Isabella was popular here in England in the 1700's and the use of Isabel as a variant of Elizabeth had been well-established by that time. So Isabel on a Caucasian woman in the 1860's doesn't indicate anything unusual - she was one of many at the time.
cheers
Devon
1
Thanks so much! So are always so kind and helpful to me! --MJ
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