Isabella

Isabella of Castile funded Columbus, Isabella of France married an English king and effectively ruled in his absence, Isabella d'Este patronized half the Italian Renaissance — the name has been a fixture of European queenship and power for nearly a thousand years, an Italian and Spanish elaboration of Elizabeth that traces back through Hebrew Elisheba, meaning my God is my oath or pledged to God. The Latinate transformation produced something more melodic and ornamented than the original: four syllables, all of them open, the central -bell- giving the word a built-in chime.

Isabella moved through European royal lines for centuries, then through Italian and Spanish-speaking America, then back into English-speaking America with a vengeance in the 1990s. Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire and a generation of romance novels gave the name a Gothic glamour; the Twilight saga, with Isabella "Bella" Swan as its protagonist, sent it briefly to number one on the SSA chart in 2009 and 2010. Famous Isabellas include the actress Isabella Rossellini (daughter of Ingrid Bergman), the Italian model Isabeli Fontana, and Isabella Blow, the British fashion editor who discovered Alexander McQueen.

The name remains in the top ten and carries an unusually flexible nickname tree: Bella for the Italian softness, Belle for the French, Izzy for the modern, Sabella for the Spanish lilt. It pairs beautifully with both very long and very short middles (Isabella Rose, Isabella Grace, Isabella Wren, Isabella June). Romantic, slightly operatic, faintly aristocratic, but never stiff. The kind of name that suggests both a love of velvet and a willingness to skin a knee.