> -elle is not necessar[il]y a diminutive. In theophoric names such as "Arielle", "Michelle", "Michele", "Gabriella" and "Gabrielle" it is derived from the Hebrew El, a name for God.
(1) El isn't a name for God in Hebrew; it's just the ordinary word for any god. Like "god" in English. Conceptually close to ba'al, the ordinary word "lord".
The best-documented confusion of this kind that I know of is the Greek "Adonis" - in Greek, Adonis is a name, but even at the time it was recognized as being a Semitic loan from a word meaning "lord". We know enough about the cult of Adonis that we can identify him with a specific Semitic god, whose name was Tammuz.
(2) You're right about the etymology of these Hebrew-derived names. I think you're on shakier ground when you say that names ending in -elle are "not necessarily diminutive" in French; since the diminutive form exists, people are inevitably going to process those names as diminutives, regardless of the etymology.
(1) El isn't a name for God in Hebrew; it's just the ordinary word for any god. Like "god" in English. Conceptually close to ba'al, the ordinary word "lord".
The best-documented confusion of this kind that I know of is the Greek "Adonis" - in Greek, Adonis is a name, but even at the time it was recognized as being a Semitic loan from a word meaning "lord". We know enough about the cult of Adonis that we can identify him with a specific Semitic god, whose name was Tammuz.
(2) You're right about the etymology of these Hebrew-derived names. I think you're on shakier ground when you say that names ending in -elle are "not necessarily diminutive" in French; since the diminutive form exists, people are inevitably going to process those names as diminutives, regardless of the etymology.