Edward Is Not in the Bible — It Means “Guardian of Wealth”

Edward is not in the Bible. It is Old English — ead, wealth or fortune, joined to weard, guard. A guardian of wealth. A rich protector.

It is one of the very few Anglo-Saxon names to survive the Norman Conquest, and the reason it survived is worth knowing.

What does the name Edward mean?

Ead-weard: the guard of what is valuable. The first element gives us the old word for prosperity and good fortune; the second is the same ward we still use for someone in another’s care and for the act of watching over them.

Several Anglo-Saxon kings bore it, the last being Saint Edward the Confessor, who died shortly before 1066. When the Normans arrived they replaced nearly all the old English names with their own — and Edward stayed, because Edward had been remembered as a just ruler and his people would not let the name go.

A name kept by popular affection through a conquest. That is a rare thing.

Is Edward in the Bible?

No — not in Hebrew, Greek or Latin Scripture, and there is no Hebrew form. Old English is some six centuries younger than the New Testament.

But guarding wealth is a subject Scripture treats at length, and not in the way the name suggests.

What Scripture does with treasure

Our Lord’s instruction is the opposite of guarding.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

And then the line that explains the whole thing: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Notice the order. He does not say our heart determines where we put our treasure. He says the treasure pulls the heart after it. Whatever we are guarding is where we will be found, eventually, in the part of us that matters.

Which makes the choosing rather important.

The guard who is also the treasure

There is a second half to this, and it is the better half.

Scripture’s picture of God is very often a guard: The Lord watches over you — the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The word runs through the psalms. He does not sleep. He does not blink.

And what is he guarding? Not property. The Lord will keep you from all harm — he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

Our coming and going. The ordinary traffic of a life, the leaving of the house in the morning and the arriving home at night, watched by somebody who does not lose interest.

For everyone who carries the name

Edward: the guard of what is valuable.

May we know the difference between what we are keeping and what is keeping us.

May the thing we guard most carefully be worth our heart following it, since it will.

And may we be, for somebody weaker than us, what the psalm says God is: awake, unmoving, at the right hand.

Related reading

• Is William a Biblical Name? Meaning, Origin, and Christian Significance
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names
• Eric Is Not in the Bible — It Means “Ever-Ruler”