Ariell is a variant spelling of Ariel, the Hebrew name meaning ‘lion of God.’
Ariell is an elaborated feminine variant of Ariel, a name of ancient Hebrew origin meaning *lion of God*—a compound of *ari* (lion) and *El* (God), the same divine suffix that appears in Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. In the Hebrew scriptures, Ariel appears as a poetic name for Jerusalem, conveying the holy city's fierce and sacred character. The lion, as the symbol of the tribe of Judah, imbued the name with royal and prophetic resonance that carried it across millennia of Jewish tradition and beyond.
In the Western literary imagination, Ariel was transformed by Shakespeare into the airy spirit of *The Tempest*—magical, free, and morally complex—a usage that shifted the name's associations from leonine power toward ethereal grace. Later, Sylvia Plath claimed it for one of the most electrifying poetry collections of the twentieth century, investing it with fierce female interiority and raw artistic ambition. Then, in 1989, Disney's *The Little Mermaid* gave Ariel to a generation of children as the name of a spirited, curious, and romantically adventurous heroine, cementing its place in popular culture as a name associated with independence and wonder.
The spelling Ariell—with the doubled final consonant—emerged primarily in American usage as a way to feminize the name visually, borrowing the convention from names like Danielle and Gabrielle while adding a distinct identity. Parents who choose this spelling often want both the resonance of the classical name and a subtle marker of individuality. It peaks in American naming records through the 1990s and 2000s, carried by the confluence of the Disney wave and a broader cultural appetite for names that sound both timeless and slightly unconventional.