Michel
The boy's name Michel has been in the national records since 1880, with 14,094 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 4,539th. About 11,000 Michels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 51.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Michel boys named Michel
Girls and boys called Michel
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 3,555 girls and 10,539 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 9 to 22.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 102 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 14,094
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 51
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 457th
- Rank in 2025
- 4,539th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 3,555 / 10,539
How old the living Michels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 14,094 babies given the name since 1880, about 11,000 are alive — 79 in every hundred. Roughly 860 of them are children and 2,700 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1974 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Either a reborrowing of French Michel or a continuation (with pronunciation influenced by Modern French) of Middle English Michel, both from Old French Michel, from Latin Michāēl, borrowed from Koine Greek Μῐχᾱήλ, from Biblical Hebrew מִיכָאֵל.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Michels
- Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)French author, philosopher, and statesman
- Michel Foucault (1926–1984)French philosopher
- Michel Platini (born 1955)French football player, manager and executive
- Michel Houellebecq (born 1956)French writer
- Michel Temer (born 1940)24th Vice-President of Brazil from 2011 to 2016 and 37th President of Brazil from 2016 to 2019
- Michel Aoun (born 1933)13th President of Lebanon from 2016 to 2022
- Michel Mayor (born 1942)Swiss astrophysicist & Nobel laureate of Physics
- Michel Barnier (born 1951)former Prime Minister of France
People named Michel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Michel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Michel is most concentrated in New Hampshire (3.3×), Maine (2.7×), Louisiana (2.6×), California (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular boys’ names the year Michel peaked:
Michel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Michel | 820,540 | 2nd |
| Belgium boys | Michel | 598 | 224th |
| Switzerland boys | Michel | 552 | 101st |
| Italy boys | Michel | 542 | — |
| France girls | Michel | 150 | 598th |
| England and Wales boys | Michel | 77 | 2,023rd |
| Poland boys | Michel | 64 birth registrations | 225th |
| Ireland boys | Michel | 14 | 243rd |
| England and Wales girls | Michel | 6 | 4,598th |
| Poland girls | Michel | 3 birth registrations | 583rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Michel: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Michel | 425 | 0.034% | 89th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Michel | 101 | 0.023% | 148th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Michel | 24 | 0.037% | 37th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Michel | 2 | 0.054% | 18th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Michel is most concentrated in Basel-Landschaft, where 0.06% of children were given it – 32 of them.
Michel: rank by region
In 2024, Michel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Michel | 487 | 5 |
In 2020, Michel was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Michel | 10 | 1 |
In 2020, Michel was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wielkopolskie | Michel | 239 | 2 |
In 2023, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Michel appears in the lists for Province of Liège (184th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Michel by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 38 | 309th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Michel among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Michel | 22,599 | 30,409 |
| the Netherlands girls | Michel | 14 | 348 |
| Finland boys | Michel | 85 | 256 |
| Finland girls | Michel | — | 13 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Michel lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,772 men called Michel were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Michel | 94 | 0.176 | 564 |
| Palmas, Las | Michel | 91 | 0.156 | 616 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Michel | 136 | 0.135 | 622 |
| Girona | Michel | 49 | 0.118 | 669 |
| Lugo | Michel | 18 | 0.114 | 556 |
| Valencia/València | Michel | 153 | 0.113 | 629 |
Listed in 44 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 8 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Michel against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.