Michel

Michel is the French shape of a Hebrew question. The name goes back to mi ka'el, who is like God, first spoken of the archangel Michael in the Hebrew Bible. Those words work as a challenge. They are aimed at anyone who would set himself level with God, and the answer they expect is: no one.

France took the name early and made it its own, so that Michel now reads as thoroughly French, worn by peasants and philosophers alike. Yet the Hebrew grammar underneath never changed. A boy called Michel in Lyon and a boy called Michał in Kraków are carrying the same three-word question, only dressed differently.

Polish kept the harder consonants. The variant Michał sits on nearly every class register, and the feminine Michalina gives the question a daughter to ask it too. On an official form at the urząd, Michel might be written down for a child of a French parent, the accent quietly dropped.

The meaning in Polish stays blunt and old: któż jak Bóg. It is less a name than a sentence, and it answers itself.