Ariela
From Hebrew, the name reads as "lioness of God". Rare in Poland: most people here have never met an Ariela, yet the count is creeping up, with more girls given it last year than in years past.
Ariela Pronunciation
Ariela is pronounced ahr-YE-lah (/arˈjɛla/).
What Ariela means
Where Ariela comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Ariela comes from Hebrew, built from ari, lion, and el, God. The masculine form Ariel appears in the Hebrew Bible, where it names both a man in the book of Ezra and, in Isaiah, the city of Jerusalem itself. Ariela is the feminine shape of that word, and its sense passed into English as "lioness of God," into Polish as "lew boży."
Among Jewish families the name stayed close to its scriptural root. It spread more widely in Hebrew-speaking households after modern Hebrew was revived as a spoken language. A lioness is not a decorative animal. The word attaches strength to a girl and does not soften it.
In a Polish class register Ariela sits apart from an Ola or a Kasia. It has no home-grown diminutive to shrink it, so a teacher reads it whole. What a child hears in it is the older sense, a lioness with God named beside her.
How many people are named Ariela
1 in 162186 women in Poland is named Ariela. 139 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2782 among female names.
Ariela's popularity over time
6 girls were given the name in 2025, ranking #850 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2016.
Where parents choose Ariela
Ariela is most popular in Holy Cross, 457% above the national average (2 girls born 2019–2025), followed by Kuyavian-Pomeranian (+182%) and Masovian (+161%).
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Holy Cross
+457%1 in 27,717 babies
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian
+182%1 in 54,690 babies
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Masovian
+161%1 in 59,044 babies
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Holy Cross+457% 2 born1 in 27,717 babies+457%
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian+182% 2 born1 in 54,690 babies+182%
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Masovian+161% 6 born1 in 59,044 babies+161%
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Łódź+144% 2 born1 in 63,359 babies+144%
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Lower Silesian+96% 2 born1 in 78,567 babies+96%
Ariela as a middle name
Ariela is a first name for 139 women in Poland and a middle name for another 29, an 83/17 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1300th, between Adria (29) and Chen (29).
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#1298 Adaeze29
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#1299 Adria29
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#1300 Ariela29
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#1301 Chen29
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#1302 Donna29