Joelle

About Joelle

Joelle is a feminine form of Joel, a Hebrew name meaning “Yahweh is God.” It is familiar in English, while French and Dutch use the form Joëlle. Its two-syllable sound ends with the clear elle familiar from several French feminine names, and squash player Joelle King provides a notable modern bearer.

Meaning and biblical background

Joel comes from the Hebrew Yoʾel, combining two elements referring to God. The traditional meaning is “Yahweh is God.” Joelle carries that origin through the masculine name, adding a feminine form rather than beginning as an independent word name.

Joel is one of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Joel describes a plague of locusts and uses the disaster within a larger prophetic message. This is the older biblical connection behind the modern feminine name.

English Joel came into Christian use after the Protestant Reformation. Joelle belongs to the later history of feminine forms in the same family; the biblical prophet himself was Joel.

English and French forms

Joëlle is the French and Dutch spelling, with a diaeresis over the e. The mark separates the vowels in pronunciation. English Joelle normally omits the mark but likewise has two syllables.

Joella is a related English feminine form with a different ending. Joel is the direct masculine relative. The final elle in Joelle gives it a more pointed ending than Joella’s open final vowel.

These relationships distinguish it from names that simply happen to end in elle. Its history rests in Joel’s Hebrew name family as well as in the later French and English forms.

Joelle King

Joelle King is a professional squash player from Cambridge, New Zealand. Her Commonwealth Games career includes gold and silver medals in Delhi in 2010 and singles bronze in Glasgow in 2014.

At the Gold Coast Games in 2018 she won gold in singles and women’s doubles, together with bronze in mixed doubles. In Birmingham in 2022 she added gold medals in women’s doubles and mixed doubles.

Her results connect Joelle with success in both individual and partnered competition. The sequence across several Games gives the name a sustained sporting association rather than only a single medal-winning moment.

King began playing squash as a child and later developed an international professional career. Her public name is also an example of the unaccented Joelle spelling used independently in an English-speaking country.

Pronunciation and American popularity

In English, Joelle is pronounced joh-EL, with stress on the second syllable. French Joëlle has a softer opening consonant, like the middle sound in vision, approximately zho-EL.

In the United States, Joelle’s largest annual total for girls was 436 in 2017, when it ranked #673. In 2025, 248 girls received it, ranking #1,010. These figures describe the exact unaccented spelling Joelle.

How popular is Joelle?

In 2025, Joelle ranked #1,010 among girls in the United States, with 248 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1918; its largest annual count was 436 in 2017. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.