Jezabel
Feminine
Jezabel is a hard name honestly used. In the Hebrew Bible it belongs to a Phoenician princess who married a king of Israel and lost the argument with the prophets, and English later turned her name into a common noun. In Spanish-speaking countries it did not: there Jezabel is simply a name, which is why it turns up in American records where Spanish is spoken.
How old is the name Jezabel?
Jezabel first appears in US birth records in 1979 — 46 years ago. The typical Jezabel alive today was born around 2009, making them about 16 years old. About 600 people named Jezabel are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Jezabel most popular?
Jezabel peaked in 2014, reaching #4350 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 10,592 places below that high. See the whole 2014 chart.
Where it comes from
From Izevel to Jezabel
The story of Jezabel
The story in Kings gives her a foreign religion, a conflict with Elijah, and a death written to be remembered, and the biblical writers were not trying to be fair. English took the name out of the story and made it a word for a scheming or immoral woman, which happened by the seventeenth century and has never worn off. Spanish and Portuguese received the same biblical text and did not make the same word, so the name survived in ordinary use across Latin America without the slur attached. Both facts are true at once, and which one a particular room applies depends entirely on what language it is thinking in.
Meaningscholars disagree
Not established
The Hebrew is Izevel, and the reading is complicated by the likelihood that it was tampered with. As written it can be read as where is the prince — a phrase from Phoenician religious ritual, addressed to a god believed to die and return. Many scholars think the original name was something like the prince exalts, and that the biblical scribes altered a syllable to turn a devotional name into a taunt. If that is right, the name we have is a deliberate insult rather than a translation, which is a rare and rather remarkable thing to find in a name.
How the name formed
- Izevel
- Iezabel
- Jezebel
- Jezabel
Related forms: אִיזֶבֶל · Jezabel · Jezabel · Jézabel
Pronouncing Jezabel
JEZ-uh-bell
JEZ-uh-bell in English, three syllables, stress at the front. Spanish says heh-sah-BEL, with the weight at the end and a soft opening consonant — a genuinely different sound, and the one this spelling is likelier to belong to.
Nicknames for Jezabel
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1979
- Most girls named
- 201433 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #4350reached in 2014
- Change vs 2024
- −75.0%5 in 2025, from 20
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Jezabel in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- אִיזֶבֶל in Hebrew — transliteration
- Jezabel in Spanish — same name
- Jezabel in Portuguese — same name
- Jézabel in French — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Jezabels among us
people named Jezabel are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Jezabel
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Joeleen test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Jezabel's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Joeleen climbed just as high around 1940, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Joeleen's path sketches the road Jezabel is walking now.
Jezabel sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Jezabel beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Jezabel in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Jez and Belle are both short forms that stand entirely on their own.
- It is a real biblical name with a documented history rather than a modern coinage, and the history is unusually interesting.
- In Spanish it is said and read without any of the English baggage, which for a bilingual family may settle the matter.
- In English the name is also a common noun for a scheming woman, and that meaning is in every dictionary. It cannot be explained away and it will be encountered early.
- The biblical figure is one of the most negatively drawn characters in the text, and anyone raised with the story will have an opinion ready.
- The a in the middle differs from the standard English spelling, so on top of everything else the name will be respelled Jezebel by default.
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What they receive
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Jezabel
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Jezabels are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Jezabel are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Jezabel in 2025?
- Jezabel ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Jezabel?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Jezabel — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Jezabel with classmates?
- Jezabel will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Jezabel
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Jezabel? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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