Joel
Meaning of Joel
Joel (pronounced JOH-ul) traces its roots to the ancient Hebrew name Yo’el, meaning “Yahweh is God,” and has been lending boys an easy-going, quietly confident charm for millennia. The prophet Joel of the Old Testament gives the name a halo of wisdom, while modern bearers—think director Joel Coen, Aussie actor Joel Edgerton, and pop-punk front man Joel Madden—show it wears just as well on red carpets and rock stages as it does in Sunday School stories. In the United States, Joel has ridden a gentle wave of popularity ever since the 1880s, cresting in the 1980s and still bobbing comfortably around the Top 200 today, proof that classic style never sinks. Short, strong, and friendly, Joel is the kind of name that fits a toddler learning to toddle, a teen on the soccer field, and a grown man signing big-kid mortgages—an evergreen choice with a little Old-World gravity and plenty of modern sparkle.
Pronunciation
British English
- Pronunced as JOH-ul (/dʒəʊl/)
American English
- Pronunced as JOH-ul (/dʒoʊl/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
States Popularity Chart
Notable People Named Joel
| Joel Embiid is a Cameroonian American center for the Philadelphia 76ers, the 2014 third pick, a 7 time All Star and 2023 NBA MVP, 2 time scoring champion, and 2024 US Olympic gold medalist. |
| Joel Chandler Harris, an American journalist and folklorist from Georgia best known for the Uncle Remus stories, apprenticed on a plantation as a teen and later worked as an associate editor at The Atlanta Constitution. |
| Joel Roberts Poinsett was an American physician, botanist, and statesman who served as the first U.S. agent in South America, a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, and the first U.S. Minister to Mexico. |
| Joel Albert McCrea was an American actor whose nearly five-decade career spanned many genres but he was best known for Westerns. |
| Joel Kinnaman is a Swedish American actor known for The Killing, Altered Carbon, House of Cards, RoboCop, the Suicide Squad films, and For All Mankind. |
| Joel McHale is an American actor, comedian, and TV host best known for The Soup and Community, with film roles in Spider-Man 2, Spy Kids All the Time in the World, Ted, and The Happytime Murders. |
| Joel Edgerton is an Australian actor and filmmaker known for The Secret Life of Us, playing Owen Lars in Star Wars, voicing Metal Beak in Legend of the Guardians, and earning a Golden Globe nomination for Loving. |
| Joel Sternfeld is an American photographer, educator, and writer whose large-format color images of contemporary life helped elevate color photography as art, blending beauty and melancholy with conceptual and political themes. |
| Joel Rueben Madden is an American singer best known as the lead vocalist of Good Charlotte and as one half of the Madden Brothers with his identical twin Benji Madden. |
| Joel Gustaf Berghult, known as Roomie, is a Swedish YouTuber, singer and producer based in Los Angeles. |
| Joel David Moore is an American character actor and director from Portland, known for Dodgeball and roles in Grandmas Boy, Art School Confidential, and Hatchet. |
| Joel Barry Pollak is a South African-born American conservative commentator, writer, radio host, and attorney who serves as senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News, studied at Harvard and the University of Cape Town, ran for Congress as a Republican in 2010, and hosts on SiriusXM. |
| Joel Louis Lebowitz is a pioneering mathematical physicist in statistical physics, founding editor of the Journal of Statistical Physics, former New York Academy of Sciences president, Rutgers professor, and human rights advocate co chairing the Committee of Concerned Scientists. |
| Joel Timothy Houston is an Australian musician, songwriter and pastor best known as a leader of Hillsong United, the worship band of Hillsong Church based in Sydney. |
| Joël Matip - Job Joel Andre Matip is a former professional footballer who played as a centre back. |
