The name Gabriel comes to us from Hebrew, where it is the name of a famous man or angel, גבריאל (gavriʾel). This theophoric name ends with אל, which is either a reference to the Canaanite deity ʾEl, or the Hebrew word for "God." The first part of this name, גבר (g-b-r), is either the Hebrew verb gavár, meaning "to be strong, mighty," or the Hebrew noun of the same spelling, géver, which means "man, strong man." Thus, the name Gabriel can either mean "God/ʾEl is my strength," or it can mean "Man of God/ʾEl."

While mentioned in the birth narrative of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (1:19, 26), Gabriel first appears in Daniel 8:16 and 9:21. Interestingly, Daniel 8:15 says that Gabriel "has the appearance of a man," while Daniel 9:21 explicitly calls Gabriel a man: "The man Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision." So according to the Book of Daniel, the messenger Gabriel truly is a "man of God."