Gorgeous name. It is the name of French author and former Louis Vuitton exec, Mireille Guiliano. I have also seen the name used in Latin America, albeit rarely, and pronounced Mee-REH-yeh.
Mireille Darc is a French model and actress. She was Alain Delon's longtime co-star and companion. She appeared as a lead character in Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Week End.
It is a wonderful name! It's rare, indeed. My name is Mirela, the Romanian form and back in the day I was so avid about finding out what it meant and I asked one of my high school teachers about it and she said: "It comes from mirar, the French word for the English to admire. It also means the marvelous one."
It's a beautiful name, even though its kind of dated in France. It was relatively common at the beginning of the 20th century, got really, really popular in the 1940's, and by the 80's it was practically unused.
I've lived in France for the better part of a decade and have never once met a Mireille. It could be that its origins in Provence make it a 'peasant' name, equivalent to the American 'redneck', so any name that originates there will NOT be fashionable here in Paris.
This is my name, and it's generally pronounced Muh-ray by Americans. I personally don't like that pronunciation, and I'd much rather people pronounced it 'correctly'--a matter of opinion--Mee-ray is much nicer.
If anyone has taken French in the last few years, Mireille is one of the characters in the dreaded series "French in Action." Apparently, the actress was also a former porn-star (oh my!).
This name is so beautiful. I used to believe that it was pronounced "mee-relle" or "mee-rayl" or something like that, but a French friend of mine set that straight for me. It is pronounced "mee-ray".
I live in the US and my name is also Mirelle. When I was born my parents named me after a French singer named Mireille. When I was about seven they changed it to Mirelle because it was easier for people to pronounce.
There is also an Americanized version of Mireille: Muirae. There are two known bearers of this name in the US, myself and a teenaged girl in California. We've been in contact and have found that we both received the name after our parents "anglicized" Mireille.