From Old English 'ead' (prosperity) and 'sele' (hall), meaning noble one's hall or wealthy estate.
Edsel is a name of uncertain Old English origin, likely derived from a place name or personal name combining elements meaning "noble" or "prosperity" (from "ead") with a suffix suggesting a hall or slope. It appears in English records from the medieval period onward as a surname, following the common pattern of place-derived family names that occasionally migrated back into given-name use. The name gained its greatest visibility in the early twentieth century as the given name of Edsel Ford, the son of Henry Ford and president of Ford Motor Company from 1919 until his early death in 1943.
Edsel Ford was by most accounts a man of genuine artistic sensibility and business acumen who was perpetually overshadowed by his domineering father, unable to fully exercise his vision for the company. In a cruel twist of posthumous reputation, Ford named a new automobile line after him in 1957 — and the Ford Edsel became one of the most celebrated commercial failures in American business history, a byword for expensive miscalculation. Within a few years, "Edsel" had entered the American vocabulary as a synonym for a flop, a fate few given names have suffered so specifically.
Before the automotive disaster, Edsel was a perfectly respectable if uncommon name with a solid Anglo-Saxon pedigree. In recent decades, some naming enthusiasts have begun to reclaim it, drawn to its chunky, vintage sound and the rehabilitated legacy of Edsel Ford himself, whose championing of industrial design and the arts has received more sympathetic treatment from historians. It remains a bold choice — a name that carries a story whether the bearer knows it or not.