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In Spanish, Isela is a Latin American variant of Icela, a nickname for Maricela. In Spain, Icela is pronounced ee-THEL-a, and Isela is ee-SEL-a, but in Latin America they are both pronounced ee-SEL-a, which explains the spelling change. Maricela can be written as Marisela in Latin America because of this.

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Edit: Just remembered Maricela and Icela can also be written Marizela and Izela (albeit rarely) in Latin America, with the same pronunciation.

This message was edited 2/5/2010, 2:41 AM

I Googled the name and came up with a baby-naming site that said it's Scottish, a variant of Isla. Hmm.

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Since I'm an avid genealogy researcher, I went to the messsage boards at Ancestry.com and did a search for "Isela". I got almost 100 hits, mostly for people of Mexican ancestry, a few Italian, including some born in the early 1900s. No indication of where the name came from, but it apparently has been in use for a while.

This message was edited 2/5/2010, 12:10 AM