Presented by

The first name 
Erika

Erika is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.

Erika is a common name for girls!

The name Erika 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 girls names, Erika ranks 718. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Erika. In the entire USA, approximately 122,154 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Erika. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.

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

What does the name 
Erika mean?

The name Erika is the feminine form of Erik, a name with Old Norse origins. It comes from Eiríkr, which means ‘ever ruler’.

Erika is not as... often found in the US as the variant spelled Erica.

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

This was a real surprise! Erika 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 #70 in the year 1990, when 4,591 parents chose this name for their newborn daughter. This made Erika 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 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 Erika was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.

Erika - a popular player in the midfield

In 2022, Erika ranked 1,147 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 189 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 Erika will remain a universally popular name.

Erika -
at home in every state from California to New York

The name Erika may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Erika is apparently especially popular in California. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 597 women in California is called Erika. In total, that’s 24,989 women who feel addressed when the name Erika is shouted loudly across California and who ensure that their name makes it to #128 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Erika as the answer a total of 121,976 times. This places Erika at #283 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Erika as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.

Erika has 5 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 girls' names: 3.9% of all common girls' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.

With five letters, the name Erika is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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 3.9%, E as the first letter in girls' names is almost as common as all 26 letters on average - and of all the girls' names that start with an E, Elizabeth is the most common.

Other names with 
E, r, i, k and a

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

With hands, flags and sounds 
How to say Erika

If your name is Erika 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 Erika

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

Elephant

Rocket

Igloo

Koala

Apple

This is how the name Erika 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 Erika in Braille?

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

Erika

Erika

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

Just use American Sign Language!

The name Erika 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
A

Have you ever waved the name Erika

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
A

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. Erika sounds like this: