An anglicized form of Irish Eireann, Erin means ‘Ireland’. Eireann is the genitive case of Irish Gaelic Éire, the Irish word for the country. Its origin is not certain, it probably means ‘fertile land’.
Erin is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Erin 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, Erin ranks 363. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 5 were named Erin. In the entire USA, approximately 318,026 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Erin. That is 0.09 % of all living Americans.
#17 - this is the highest position Erin has ever reached. Not many names manage to reach such a high popularity in even one of the 140+ years of records. The last time Erin reached this top spot at the end of the past century in 1983 when 15,052newborn girls were named Erin. But as our statistics show, Erin hasn't always been a popular name: in some years of record, most recently in the year 1901, it was given to newborns not at all or at least less than 5 times (a name is only included in the official statistics only if it is given at least 5 times in a year). Nevertheless, the name Erin has accompanied people in this country for a long time. It turns out that this name fits very well in our modern times. From zero to hero – even if its peak is in the past, Erin has become a fashionable name after all.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Erin was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, 450 newborn girls were given the name Erin, making this first name #592. Towards the end of the last century, the name had a real flight of fancy and still captivates many people today − just like the music of the 80s. So, the chances to meet a young Erin are still quite high.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Erin is one of them. However, Erin is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Alaska seem to particularly fancy this name – the 794 women called Erin who live here are 0,417% of all female residents and push their name up to #59, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in Alaska.
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 four letters, the name Erin 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 3.9%, 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.
If your name is Erin 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 Erin, you can simply say:
Elephant
Rocket
Igloo
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Erin
Erin
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
E
R
I
N
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
N
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. Erin sounds like this:
