girls:
3.5k births since 1939
#2905 (49th percentile)
boys:
10.5k births since 1880
#1139 (75th percentile)
overall:
14k births since 1880
#2215 (71st percentile)
The name Michel is the #2,215 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 14,015 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 71.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 71.4% of all names). For boys, it ranks #1,139 (75.2% percentile) for all time with 10,484 births since 1880. For girls, it ranks #2,905 (49.2% percentile) for all time with 3,531 births since 1939.
Michel has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 (since 1880 for boys and since 1939 for girls). Birth data for Michel is available in 125 out of the 144 years between 1880 and 2023 (125 years for boys and 82 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Michel has been given predominantly to boys, with 74.8% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 71.1% of babies named Michel were boys.
For boys, Michel reached its peak popularity in 1957, achieving the 36.8% percentile (ranked #416) with 130 births per million. The name was most common in 1957, with 130 births per million (ranked 36.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2020, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Michel ranks #889 for boys (2.4% percentile) with 15 births per million, which is 11.4% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Michel reached its peak popularity in 1966, achieving the 11.4% percentile (ranked #657) with 51 births per million. The name was most common in 1966, with 51 births per million (ranked 11.4% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2007, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Michel ranks #941 for girls (0.6% percentile) with 6 births per million, which is 12.4% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Michel".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Michelle. View all variations of Michelle.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Michel", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 31 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Michelle" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Michelle..
Our model has identified 4 different pronunciations for the name Michel. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 69.4% confident that Michel is pronounced as mih-SHEHL, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is mih-KEHL, at 13.9% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Michel? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Michel. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Michel, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like M IH0 SH EH1 L) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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