Possibly from Scottish Amabel meaning 'lovable,' or a blend of Anna and Belle.
Annabel is one of those names whose sweetness conceals a tangle of old roots. It is often explained as a form related to Annabella, combining Anna, from Hebrew Hannah meaning “grace,” with the bella element associated with beauty. Some scholars also connect it to the medieval name Amabel, from Latin amabilis, “lovable.”
That overlap is fitting, because Annabel has always sounded like a name made of affection: graceful, lovely, and warmly human. Its history is not perfectly linear, but its meanings have consistently clustered around grace, beauty, and belovedness. The name gained particular force in the English-speaking imagination through literature.
Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee,” first published in 1849, wrapped the name in melancholy romance and gave it a permanent place in literary memory. Even people who never read the poem often feel its echo: Annabel is lyrical, wistful, and faintly sea-lit because Poe made it so. At the same time, the name has appeared in aristocratic, Scottish, and English settings, keeping it from being merely gothic.
It can be literary without becoming theatrical. Over time, Annabel has moved in and out of fashion, sometimes eclipsed by Annabelle, Isabella, or other belle-names, then rediscovered by parents who want something classic but not overused. Its perception has shifted from old-fashioned gentility to literary chic and back toward timeless elegance.
Notable bearers in public life have kept it visible, but its deepest cultural association remains poetic. Annabel is a name that seems to carry a candle inside it: tender, cultivated, and touched by the long afterglow of love stories, especially the kind literature refuses to let die.