Italian form of Michael, from Hebrew Mikha'el meaning 'who is like God?'
Michele is the Italian and French masculine form of Michael, derived from the Hebrew "Mīkhā'ēl," meaning "Who is like God?" — a rhetorical question implying that no one is, rendering the name an expression of divine incomparability. The archangel Michael, warrior and protector of Israel and later of the Christian church, carries the name through centuries of theology, art, and iconography.
Michelangelo — "Michael's angel" — embedded the name permanently in the history of Western art; Michele della Robbia, Donatello's full name Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi aside, and countless Italian masters worked in a cultural world saturated with the name's celestial associations. In Italian usage, Michele remains firmly masculine — a classic, distinguished given name borne by artists, scholars, and saints across the peninsula's history. In French, Michel is the masculine form, with Michèle and Michelle as feminine variants.
In English-speaking countries, the spelling Michele was adopted as a feminine name through the mid-twentieth century, partly through the influence of the French feminine and partly through the cultural prestige of Italian naming. The Beatles' 1965 song "Michelle" — written by Paul McCartney with a few words of French woven in — sent the name rocketing up baby name charts across the English-speaking world and cemented Michelle and Michele as quintessentially mid-century feminine names in America and Britain. Michele today occupies interesting gender-ambiguous territory: unmistakably masculine in Italy, predominantly feminine in the United States, and spanning both in between. This duality gives the name a cross-cultural richness that rewards those who know the name's full biography.