From Old French 'merveille' meaning miracle or wonder, expressing admiration.
Marvel as a personal name arrives through Old French merveille and Middle English merveil, meaning 'a wonder' or 'a miracle' — something that provokes astonishment and awe. The word traces back to the Latin mirabilia, the neuter plural of mirabilis (wonderful), from mirari (to wonder at), the same root that gives English admire and miracle. In the medieval period, 'a marvel' was a thing beyond ordinary explanation — a supernatural occurrence, a prodigy of nature, an event that challenged the boundaries of the known world.
Using it as a given name was a declaration of extraordinary expectation, a hope that this child would be something wondrous. Marvel has been used as both a masculine and feminine given name in the United States since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, appearing most frequently in Southern and rural communities where virtue names and word names with strong semantic content were traditional. It belongs to a family of similar names — Wonder, Miracle, Glory — that were common among African American families in particular, chosen with deliberate meaning and aspiration.
In cultural history, the name predates the comic book publisher by decades; when Martin Goodman founded what would become Marvel Comics in 1939, he borrowed the word's connotations of superhuman wonder rather than the other way around, though today's global dominance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has inevitably colored how the name lands. For contemporary parents, Marvel occupies genuinely interesting territory. It is a real English word with a beautiful meaning, a documented history as a given name, and the rare quality of feeling both vintage and utterly current.
The MCU association is impossible to ignore but need not be a deterrent — it guarantees the name will be recognized and gives it a heroic, optimistic charge. As a name for any gender, Marvel announces a child who is expected to astonish.