Well, according to the Social Security website at
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/the female
Noel was ranked around 860 in the 1000 most popular names for newborns in the US in the 1990's.
The female
René did not "chart", but a quick Google search with "Mrs.
Rene" turns up quite a number of female
Rene's.
I personally think that the US naming habits make most such male/female questions uninteresting, because the answer is almost always "Yes": Yes, there are male such-and-such despite one would judge this to be a female name, and vica-versa of course.
In the US, no name seems to be female enough to stop people to give the name to males also, the only thing one can hope for is a small number of cases :)
Rene www.AboutNames.ch