Ariel

Jewish mystical tradition, particularly the Kabbalah, treats Ariel as 1 of the names of the archangels, associated with the element of air and with the spiritual fire on the altar of the Temple.

The name appears in the Zohar and in various medieval angelic hierarchies compiled in Jewish and Christian occult literature.

The Christian demonology of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and later writers included Ariel as a spirit of the waters, which contributed indirectly to the name’s later literary incarnations.

The most consequential literary bearer is the airy spirit Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (circa 1611), a evocative servant bound to the magician Prospero.

Shakespeare’s Ariel is gender-ambiguous in the text, appearing in forms including a sea nymph and a harpy.

The character inspired Sylvia Plath’s posthumous collection Ariel (1965) and André Maurois’s biography Ariel: The Life of Shelley (1923).

In contemporary culture the most widely recognized Ariel is the mermaid princess of Hans Christian Andersen, via the Disney animated film The Little Mermaid (1989), which decisively reshaped the name’s gender distribution in English-speaking countries.

Across the United States, Ariel first entered the SSA top 1000 for boys in 1969 and for girls in 1976. The feminine usage exploded after the release of The Little Mermaid in 1989, reaching the top 100 by 1991.

In Israel, Ariel remains predominantly masculine and is among the top boy names, borne notably by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (1928-2014). In English-speaking countries the name is now primarily feminine, though masculine usage persists.

Contemporary bearers include American figure skater Ariel Cornejo, Argentine chef Ariel Rodriguez Palacios, and Israeli musician Ariel Zilber.