Isabella was the most popular name for a newborn girl in the United States in 2010. The Social Security Administration, which keeps tabs on all of us, also keeps track of what parents name their offspring and lets the world know.
For 40 years Isabella didn’t even rank in the top 1,000 choices. Parents decided on Destiny, Dawn and Tiffany instead or chose a wild spelling of a family name — Bettyee, perhaps — which became an unintended curse.
Last year, however, parents looked around for some classical moniker that would introduce some stability to this unstable time and found Isabella. (Which brings Columbus and his queen to mind. How classical can you get?)
But they stuck with Jacob for their boys. Jacob has been at the top for years. It’s biblical. Classic, too.
Isabella is a great name. Solid, like Ruth, Dorothy, Mary, Elizabeth and Rachel. Wonder where those grand old names came in on the rankings? Wonder if there is any correlation between the names chosen in our Great Recession and those picked in the Great Depression? Too lazy to learn.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.â¨
