Isabeau

[victoriana88]

Ok, I don't know if I would ever use Isabeau but every so often it pops into my head. I also don't if I'd pronounce it Isa - BO or Isa - BOO.

What do you all think?

[elisabeth rae]

I've only heard it pronounced Isabeau. NMS but it's interesting, and I do prefer it to Isabella.

[taylorblueskye]

First: the pronunciation is Isa-bo, not -boo. As a french speaker that is important to me. I just don't like it when name pronunciations are just made-up.

The second thing that bothers me about this name is that -beau is male. -belle is the female version of this verb, -beau is the male. You can't really compare that to anything in the English language as it doesn't have gender specific verbs, but to me that is a grammatical error in a name and that really bothers me. Somehow gives me two possible negative impressions: The parents either didn't know better, used a name from another language and didn't check the background OR the parents knew and didn't care which I feel is kind of ignorant. (Sorry, usually not that negative, but I read this name a lot and it really bothers me...)

So yeah, Isabelle is the right version of this name.

Also, if you really want to use it despite this background, I feel the Isabo spelling would make the mistake a little less obvious.

[babeinthewoods]

This name fascinates me. I've always said it Iz-Ah-Bo, with the last sylable pronounced like the french "beau." I'd love to see some history or etymology for Isabeau. My gut feeling is that it should actually be the masculine version of Isabelle, being as "Beau" is the masculine form of "Belle," but I've yet to find anything that either supports or contradicts that idea.

[dantea]

It's pronounced Is-a boh. Beau is french for Handsome and is pronounced BOH, therefore, is-a- boh

I like it, and I think it would be refreshing to see it instead of Isabelle.

[victoriana88]

I know it should be pronounced BO but people do pronounce Beau as Boo. If I ever did name a little girl Isabeau I would probably end up calling her Boo anyway.
TaylorBlueSkye, I understand why that would annoy you, people mispronouncing Irish and Scottish names really annoys me!

[diana_m]

I agree with taylorblueskye 100%.

[thetxbelle]

@taylorblueskye I see your reasoning but Isabeau is indeed a female name.

Isabeau de Bavière was a queen consort of France, the name is "épicène", I can't explain it all because I'm on my phone but I explained Isabeau VS Mirabeau in a post once. Here is a wiki on it though and stats
http://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabeau
http://www.aufeminin.com/w/prenom/p8513/isabeau.html

[malk]

It is an old name, Middle ages, Isabeau de Bavière, Queen Consort of France(1385-1422) used it. Not sure why she used the male version of the name though.
I love it. But because it's so close to the popular Isabelle I'd never use it as I'm sure people would try to shorten it to Izzie.

[thetxbelle]

It is an old name, Middle ages, Isabeau de Bavière, Queen Consort of France(1385-1422) used it. Not sure why she used the male version of the name though.

It's not a male name, its Épicène which basically means unisex, in France it is rarely used but when it is, it's used for girls.

I'm not good with explaining or understanding phonetic prn on nameberry but I would say Dante's is the most accurate. For a person without a French accent you might actually prn it more correctly by trying to say "BOOH" because "beau" is really somewhere in between boh and booh, maybe someone else can explain that better if it doesn't make sense or you can just listen below.

Audio links here:
Beau: http://www.forvo.com/word/beau/#fr
beau geste http://www.forvo.com/word/beau_geste/#fr
Isabeau: http://www.forvo.com/word/isabeau/#fr http://www.forvo.com/word/isabeau_de_bavi%C3%A8re/#fr