Isabel is the Spanish and Portuguese form of Elizabeth — from the Hebrew *Elisheba* ("my God is my oath"). **A top-100 US baby name since 2007**. **Queen Isabel I of Castile (1451-1504)** — **Catholic Monarch of Castile-León (r. 1474-1504); with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon, unified Spain through their 1469 marriage and completed the Reconquista with the 1492 fall of Granada**; financed Christopher Columbus's first voyage of 1492. **Together with Ferdinand authorized the Spanish Inquisition (1478) — among the most-debated decisions in European Catholic history**. **Isabel Allende (born 1942)** — Chilean American novelist; *The House of the Spirits* (1982) inaugurated the magic-realist boom for Latin American women writers; **75+ million books sold across 42 languages — the world's most-read Spanish-language author**; Presidential Medal of Freedom (2014); PEN/Edna Pontellier Award. **Isabel Lucas (born 1985)** — Australian actress (*Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen* 2009). **Isabel Wilkerson (born 1961)** — American journalist; Pulitzer Prize (1994 — first Black woman); *The Warmth of Other Suns* (2010). **Isabel Marant** — French fashion designer.
Featured throughout Spanish history and global literature.
Isabel reduces to nine — the number of Spanish-language novelist.