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The first name 
Erik

Erik is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.

Erik – popular and common in the US!

The name Erik 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, Erik ranks 343. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 5 were named Erik. In the entire USA, approximately 152,584 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Erik. That is 0.05 % of all living Americans.

You won't believe all there is 
to discover about the name
 
Erik

What does the name 
Erik mean?

Erik means ‘ever ruler’. It comes from the Old Norse name Eiríkr, derived from the elements ‘ei’ for ‘ever, always’ and ‘ríkr’ for ‘ruler, king’. The name was first brought to England by Danish settlers, but it was not popular in England in the Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, it has become a common name.

This was the name ... of multiple kings of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. King Erik IX of Sweden (12th century) is the patron saint of his country.

Erik has several famous namesakes

A sailor

Erik »the Red« Thorvaldsson
The Norwegian-Icelandic Erik Thorvaldsson is considered the founder of the first Scandinavian settlement on Greenland. Because of his red hair and his acts of violence, he was nicknamed »the Red.«

A supervillan

Erik Killmonger
Erik »Killmonger« Stevens is a fictional character from Marvel Comics. The supervillain is the main antagonist of Black Panther. Within the Marvel Cinematic Universe films »Black Panther« Killmonger was played by Michael B. Jordan.

A psychoanalyst

Erik Homburger Erikson (1902–1994)
Born under the name Erik Salomonsen, he was a child psychoanalyst. Known for his theory on psychosocial development of human beings the German-American coined the phrase »identity crisis«.

A soccer player

Erik Ross Palmer-Brown (*1997)
Erik Palmer-Brown is s US soccer player and, at the age of 17, was the youngest defender ever to play in Major League Soccer (MLS).

An ice hockey player

Erik Robert Johnson (*1988)
Johnson is a US ice hockey defenseman. Nicknamed »Condor« he plays for the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League (NHL).

A wrestler

Raymond Rowe Sr. (*1984)
Rowe a US-American professional wrestler who performs under the ring name Erik on WWE. Together with Todd Smith (also known as Ivar) he performs in a tag team called »The Viking Raiders«.

Go on a journey to places 
with your name

When you hear the name Erik, you might first think of people. But did you know that there are also places with the name Erik? Are you also called Erik? Maybe one day you will visit the places that are named just like you...

A church

St Erik's Church is an exterritorial church of the Church of Sweden in San Pedro, California (USA)

A statue

of Erik the Red is located in the Greenlandic settlement of Qassiarsuk (Brattahlíð).

Erik -
carrying the 80s and 90s into our century

This was a real surprise! Erik is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off at the end of the 20th century. According to our SmartGenius statistics, it reached its highest rank at #64 in the year 1980, when 4,959 parents chose this name for their newborn son. This made Erik much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. Now, this boys' name seems to have found its place and has established itself in the beginning of the 21st century as well.

In years where the graph has no value, the name Erik was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.

Erik - a popular player in the midfield

In 2022, Erik ranked 414 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to newborn boys a total of 712 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Erik will remain a universally popular name.

Erik -
very special and well known across the entire USA

Everyone knows him, everyone loves him and still he’s different from the mainstream: Erik occurs in every single state of the U.S. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the nearly 50,000 different male first names that occur in the USA, only 386 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Erik is definitely something very special. However, at the same time, since the name does not appear in the top 100 most common first names in any single state, Erik is not one of those names that everyone encounters in his neighbourhood, but stands out from the crowd, captures attention and is something special without being strange or unknown. From Alaska to Florida, a total of 152,481 men and boys of all generations bear the name Erik – that is one in 1,095. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in Alaska, where one in 400 men and boys is called Erik, while it is particularly rare in Mississippi, where you have to ask an average of 4,444 men for their name to get Erik as an answer once.

Erik has 4 letters 
and begins with an E

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 Erik 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.

Other names with 
E, r, i and k

If you take all the letters in the name Erik – E, r, i and k – and put them together again, you can form other names, such as Iker or others.

With hands, flags and sounds 
How to say Erik

If your name is Erik 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...

This is how you spell the name Erik

So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Erik, you can simply say:

Elephant

Rocket

Igloo

Koala

This is how the name Erik is spelled in the NATO phonetic alphabet

The NATO alphabet often helps people spell words on the phone or radio when there are communication problems.

How do you write Erik in Braille?

Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.

Erik

Erik

You want to tell a deaf person that your name is Erik

Just use American Sign Language!

The name Erik is particularly colorful in the Semaphore flag signaling system!

These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.

E
R
I
K

Have you ever waved the name Erik

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
K

Beeping like crazy...

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. Erik sounds like this: