The French name Michelle was already a top-20 girl name in the U.S. when it suddenly saw a massive increase in usage in the mid-1960s:
- 1968: 33,222 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 2nd]
- 1967: 30,826 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 3rd]
- 1966: 27,158 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 4th]
- 1965: 16,215 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 18th]
- 1964: 16,182 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 23rd]
Michelle’s jump of nearly 11,000 baby girls from 1965 to 1966 easily qualifies as the steepest girl-name rise of the year. In fact, the jump currently ranks 10th on the list of top girl-name rises of all time.
So, what was drawing extra attention to the name Michelle in 1966?
“Michelle” by the Beatles. The love ballad — and the only Beatles song to feature French lyrics — was a track on the British band’s sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, which came out in December of 1965.
Here’s what “Michelle” sounds like:
“Michelle” was never released as a single in the U.S., so it never ranked on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart. Despite this, it was played frequently on the radio, and ended up winning the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in March of 1967.
The song started out as a French-sounding ditty that Paul McCartney would play at parties in Liverpool during the late 1950s (when Left Bank bohemian culture was trendy in England). In the mid-1960s, at the suggestion of John Lennon, Paul developed the ditty into a proper song. He wrote the lyrics around the French feminine name Michelle, and came up with the rhyming phrase ma belle (“my beauty”) and the lyrics sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble (“are the words that go very well together”) with some help from a French-speaking friend.
Thanks largely to the song, the name Michelle was one of the top five girl names in the nation from 1966 to 1974. Though it ranked second a total of four times, it never managed to take the top spot. (It was denied by Lisa during the late 1960s, then Jennifer during the early 1970s.)
What are your thoughts on the name Michelle? (Do you know anyone named after the song “Michelle”?)
P.S. Coincidentally, Paul McCartney was married for nearly three decades to Linda Eastman, whose first name inspired the 1946 song “Linda,” which turned Linda into the fastest-rising girl name of all time from 1946 to 1947.
Sources: Michelle (song) – Wikipedia, Michelle – The Beatles Bible, SSA
I have an aunt named Michele, my mom’s second-youngest sister, b. 1953. My mom, a huge Beatlemaniac since 1964 when she was 13, was miffed that the band had songs about “Michelle” and “Lovely Rita,” her sisters’ names and her mom’s name. If only they had written a song about Christine, or my mom had been named Julia or Martha instead. The baby sister’s name is Lisa Marie, so although there was no Beatles connection, she had the same name as Elvis’s baby, and that was nearly as painful.
I like Michelle/Michele as a name, but since it was still a really popular name for my birth year (1973), I also knew a few Michelles whom I didn’t like. I love the song, though!
Oh your poor mom!
Ironically, I like every Beatles song I’ve ever heard *except* for this one. I do appreciate it when bands experiment with different sounds and styles, but “Michelle” just isn’t my cup of tea.