Eric is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Eric isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Eric ranks 145. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 15 were named Eric. In total, there are currently 877,732 people – children, adults and seniors – named Eric living in the United States, which is approximately 0.26 % of the entire population.
The first name Eric, as well as the alternative spelling Erik, is probably rooted in the Danish or Swedish language, but may also be of Low German-Frisian origin. A derivation via the Old Norse ‘eiríkr’ is ‘autocrat’. According to another variant, the name is based on the Old Saxon ‘era’ for ‘honor’ or ‘ewa’ for ‘law’ and ‘riki’ for ‘powerful, ruler’.
Eric is the title... of a 1990 Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett (1948 - 2015). The comic fantasy book series consists of 41 novels.
Eric is the epitome of perseverance. Every year since first names have been registered in the U.S., parents have come up with the idea of naming their child Eric. This means that several boys named Eric have witnessed major events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. This first name has been particularly popular for several years and was ranked as high as #13 in 1976 at the latest. Furthermore, the name has also been in the top 100 a number of times. This makes Eric one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Eric was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Eric will be Eric. Like every other year, there have been newborns named Eric in 2022 – in fact 1,549 to be precise, confirming Eric is still a very popular first name. In this most recent year for which US-wide statistics are available, the name ranked #224 among all boys‘ names. For comparison, the least popular year for this first name was 1882, when only 9 baby boys were named Eric.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Eric. Because: There are men and boys named Eric in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the nearly 50,000 different male first names that occur in the USA, just 386 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Eric is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular male first names, for example in California, where Eric ranks on position 25. The greatest chance of meeting Eric, however, is in Alaska, where one in 134 boys and men bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 191 men and boys and in Arkansas, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 288 men and boys for their name before you once get Eric as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter E is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 3.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With four letters, the name Eric is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that with 3.8%, E as the first letter in boys' names is almost as common as all 26 letters on average - and of all the boys' names that start with an E, Edward is the most common.
If your name is Eric and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Eric, you can simply say:
Elephant
Rocket
Igloo
Cat
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Eric
Eric
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
E
R
I
C
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
E
R
I
C
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Eric sounds like this:
