Danielle

Danielle is the French feminine of Daniel, from the Hebrew Daniyyel — God is my judge — the prophet who read cryptic handwriting on a Babylonian wall and walked unscathed from a den of lions. The French spelling brought the name into English in the 1940s, and it climbed American charts through the 1960s before peaking in the top twenty in the late 1980s. Two syllables, the final -elle giving it the soft flourish characteristic of French feminine endings. Danielle sits at that flattering intersection of biblical gravity and midcentury glamour — serious in its origin, conversational in its sound, a confident name with old architecture inside.