Michelle is the French feminine form of Michel. This is the French variant of Michael, that has its origins in the Hebrew name Mikha’el meaning ‘Who is like God?’ or “gift from God”.
Michelle is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Michelle isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Michelle ranks 210. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 9 were named Michelle. In total, there are currently 809,214 people – children, adults and seniors – named Michelle living in the United States, which is approximately 0.24 % of the entire population.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Michelle reached its highest rank ever in the year 1973 at #2. In other words: 27,050 newborn girls were named Michelle that year. Since then, it has been considered to be a universally popular name, chosen by a large number of happy parents every year. Although the times of its highest popularity are now many decades ago, Michelle is still going strong and has not been forgotten yet. We can only wait and see if there will be a new surprise in store and if Michelle will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Michelle was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Michelle ranked 347 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 818 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Michelle will remain a universally popular name.
Regardless of where you live in the US, chances are you know someone called Michelle. Because: There are women and girls named Michelle in every state in the USA. If this does not sound particularly spectacular to you, you should know that of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Michelle is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 10 of the most popular female first names, for example in Hawaii, where Michelle ranks on place 5, making it one of the most common female first names in the entire state. The greatest chance of meeting Michelle, however, is in Alaska, where one in 104 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 191, women and girls and in Mississippi, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 553 women and girls for their name before you once get Michelle as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter M is a quite popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 8.5% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters A and S are more common for girls' names.
With eight letters, the name Michelle is long compared to other names. In fact, 14.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly eight letters. 78% of all first names are shorter, while only 8% of all boys’ and girls’ names use nine letters or even more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long with no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 8.5% of all girls' names start with an M, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the girls’ names starting with M is Mary.
If your name is Michelle and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Michelle, you can simply say:
Mouse
Igloo
Cat
Hat
Elephant
Lion
Lion
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Michelle
Michelle
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
I
C
H
E
L
L
E
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
M
I
C
H
E
L
L
E
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Michelle sounds like this:
