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Jezebel in the Hebrew is אִיזֶבֶל ('Izevel) which would read like "not exalted" or "not married" in any language of Canaan. It's probably a disparaging form of the original Phoenician name, which in full was probably "The Lord ("baal") is my dwelling/husband", something like B'l'zbl, which seems to be a known female name in Phoenician. The English form Jezebel comes via the Septaguint, which rendered the name in Greek as Iezebel, or Jezebel once J instead of I came to stand for the phoneme /j/ in medieval Latin (/j/ to /dj/ or similar occurred later in some languages. Oh, and /b/ and /v/ are common allophones, with one letter often standing for both phonemes as the value changes due the surrounding phonemes).

This message was edited 2/7/2020, 4:14 AM