I completely disagree with this being listed as a masculine name. Noel without the umlaut would be the male name pronounced as "knoll," but "no-el" sounds feminine to me. I've never really liked using "Noelle" for girls; the umlaut separates the vowel sounds into two syllables, so it's just unnecessary to add extra letters to feminize the name. I love Noel (with the dots!) for girls.