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Re: Isael
It looks like a misspelling/mistyping of 'Israel'; in fact, I misread it as Israel at least twice. Even Google gives the 'Showing results for Israel', but if I say, 'Search instead for Isael', it does of course come up with results, including a Brazilian midfielder named Isael da Silva Barbosa.According to ebabynames.com (which also comes up on my Google search), Isael is in fact a form (Portuguese) of Israel. It does not, however, offer any clues as to the pronunciation beyond that. :/ I'd guess, given the Israel connection, that your 'ee-sa-EL' guess is not too far off, though it might be closer to IZ-ay-əl or IS-ay-el (I really am not an expert on usual Portuguese pronunciations, though!).I'm guessing a lot of people would mistake it for Israel or even (presumptuously) assume it's a typo and attempt to "correct" it to Israel which could lead to a lot of frustration to anyone named Isael. (I have a brother named Aidan who has endured a lifetime of people mispronouncing and misspelling his name, often with no logical reason, even when reading the name off a computer printout!) I don't mean to say that I think this is a good reason not to use the name. People (like me) can get used to seeing/hearing things they're not initially used to - how else can we ever learn? ;)The name is quite lovely. It has a sort of "softer" feel to it than Israel, I think, but it doesn't exactly sound "feminine" to me.
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Interesting. When I first saw it, it looked like Ismael which is one of my favourite names. I got it from the Internet, and the Isael in question is a young boy from the US. Maybe his parents are Brazilian?
I guess Isael may look like a typo, and it could be annoying to correct people all the time. But you're right, people can just get used to it, there are much more complicated names out there. P.S.: Aidan looks like the natural spelling to me. The first and only Aidans I met are from Ireland, where the name is used with this spelling. Actually, I was surprised when I started seeing Aiden, etc.

This message was edited 8/31/2015, 7:18 AM

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I hadn't even thought of Ismael, but that's also only one letter off! I guess since I'm more used to seeing it spelled Ishmael.(Almost no one was named Aidan when my brother and I were growing up, but he was named for one of our ancestors - we're Canadian and our background is mostly English, Irish, and Scottish. Now, everyone under ten is named Aidan or Aiden or Aden or Ayden or whatever.)
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