Variant spelling of Rachel, from Hebrew meaning 'ewe' or 'female sheep.'
Rachell is a variant spelling of Rachel, one of the oldest continuously used female names in Western tradition. From the Hebrew רָחֵל (Rakhel), the name means 'ewe' — a female sheep — and carried tender pastoral associations in the ancient Levantine world where sheep represented both livelihood and gentleness. In the Book of Genesis, Rachel is the great love of the patriarch Jacob, for whom he labored fourteen years — seven years, then seven more after being deceived — making her name synonymous with devotion, longing, and patient love.
She became the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve tribes of Israel. The name traveled through Jewish, Christian, and eventually secular European culture with remarkable durability. In medieval England it was a primarily Jewish name, becoming more broadly Christian after the Reformation when Puritan families turned to the Hebrew Bible for names.
A weeping Rachel became a powerful poetic image across European literature, drawn from the Gospel of Matthew's quotation of Jeremiah: 'Rachel weeping for her children.' This association with maternal grief gave the name a depth of feeling that kept it resonant across centuries. The alternate spelling Rachell, with its doubled final letter, gives the name a slightly older, more archival appearance — evoking handwritten parish registers and colonial-era documents where spelling was less standardized.
While Rachel remains perennially popular, Rachell is rarer, carrying a quiet individuality. It gained renewed cultural visibility through the television series Friends, where Rachel Green became one of the defining characters of 1990s popular culture, though the alternate spelling retains its own distinct, more antiquarian character.