Variant of Reuel, from Hebrew meaning 'friend of God'; a biblical name for Jethro.
Ruel is a Hebrew name of quiet but profound resonance, built from the elements ra'ah (friend, companion) and El (God), yielding the beautiful meaning "friend of God" — a designation that places its bearer in an intimate, relational standing with the divine rather than a merely formal or hierarchical one. Friendship with God was a distinction reserved in the Hebrew scriptures for figures of extraordinary trust and fidelity: Abraham was called God's friend, and Moses spoke with God face to face as a man speaks with his friend. To name a child Ruel was to invoke this sacred category of intimacy.
In the Old Testament, Ruel appears as one of the names of Jethro, the Midianite priest who became the father-in-law of Moses. In Exodus 2:18, after Moses flees Egypt and helps the daughters of a Midianite priest at a well, they return home to tell their father Ruel about the stranger who assisted them. This figure — later predominantly called Jethro — was a sage outsider who welcomed Moses into his family, gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage, and later, crucially, advised Moses to delegate judicial responsibility to capable leaders rather than trying to judge every dispute alone.
Jethro-Ruel's counsel is considered one of the earliest descriptions of organizational management in recorded literature. The name also appears in Numbers as a Gadite leader. Ruel remained in occasional use among families who named children directly from the Old Testament, particularly among the more scripturally rigorous Protestant traditions. In contemporary usage it is exceedingly rare in English-speaking countries, which lends it a certain quiet distinction: easily pronounced, genuinely ancient, and carrying a meaning — friend of God — that no amount of fashion can diminish.