The name Israel comes from the Hebrew name Yisra’el meaning ‘God contends’. It is composed of the ‘sarah’ meaning ‘to contend, to fight’ and ‘el’ meaning ‘God’.
Israel is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Israel isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Israel ranks 235. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 9 were named Israel. In the entire USA, approximately 63,275 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Israel. That is 0.02 % of all living Americans.
The name Israel comes from the Hebrew name Yisra’el meaning ‘God contends’. It is composed of the ‘sarah’ meaning ‘to contend, to fight’ and ‘el’ meaning ‘God’.
Did you know... that the biblical Jacob, father of the twelve tribes of Israel, was renamed as Israel after wrestling with an angel?
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Israel annualy. This means that there have been boys named Israel who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Israel have consistently been special. Since 2000, however, the name has experienced a certain popularity: in 2006, it holds its present record of #194 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Israel was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Israel has never been ranked higher than #194. In 2022, he rivaled the 222 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 1,551 boys named Israel were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Israel were born, there have been 902 newborns who received this name.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter I is quite rare as a first letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an I. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With six letters, the name Israel is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 1.5% of all boys' names begin with an I, this initial letter is significantly less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are boys' names with I that are quite popular, the most common at present is Isaac.
If your name is Israel and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Israel, you can simply say:
Igloo
Sun
Rocket
Apple
Elephant
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Israel
Israel
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
I
S
R
A
E
L
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
I
S
R
A
E
L
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Israel sounds like this:
