Miss Yonge in her _History of Christian Names_, is no doubt right in taking Isabel to be another form of Elizabeth, with which it is historically shown to have interchanged. But the etymological process by which this has been brought about has been always somewhat of a puzzle, and it is upon this point that I have to suggest an explanation. Now the key to the puzzle is this: that the early Frankish converts in the time of Charlemagne, introduced the name, not only in its Latin form of Elizabeth, but also, and indeed more frequently, in its Hebrew form of Elischeba--it was Elischeba that was made into Isabel and not Elizabeth. Protected by its strong ending, Elizabeth has retained its form unchanged. Elischeba has been entirely lost to sight under a cloud of transformations. Slightly modified to suit Frankish pronunciation, it was introduced in the first instance as Elisaba, Elisabia, Alisabia, and Elisavia, all names of women in the _Polyptique de l'Abbé Irminon_ and the _Polyptique de Saint Remi de Reims_. In the fourteenth century (if, indeed, it did not take place earlier) we find this old Frankish form El(isaba) abbreviated into Isabeau, its ending being made to conform to French ideas of spelling. Isabeau was the name of the wife of Charles VI. of France, and the name was still recognised as being the same as Elizabeth. We have got to forge the connecting link between Isabeau and Isabel, but the process is not a violent one. It would not be difficult to suppose that the French idea of the fitness of things in the case of a woman's name would lead them to change this masculine-seeming ending, _beau_, into what they would conceive to be its appropriate feminine, and so make Isabeau into Isabelle. We need not suppose that this took place all at once, or that because one man changed Isabeau into Isabel, everybody else forthwith proceeded to follow his example. It is more probable that the two names existed side-by-side, together, for some time before the struggle for existence terminated in the survival of (what seemed) the fitter. Throughout all these changes the identity of the name with Elizabeth had always been recognised; but when Isabel had finally succeeded in establishing its claim as the representative, the deposed Isabeau, its origin having been forgotten, might have become a man's name, and so capable of transmitting surnames, which would account for Isabeau as a family name in France at the present day.