Eric
Meaning
eternal ruler
The story
Eric is the Old Norse Eiríkr, a ruler's name from the start: it belonged to early kings of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and to Eiríkr the Red, the tenth-century navigator who reached Greenland. Danish settlers carried it to England, where it slept through the Middle Ages until a Victorian bestseller, the 1858 school story Eric, or Little by Little, made it fashionable among English speakers again. America was the last conquest and the largest: nearly invisible in the records for half a century, Eric climbed through the 1960s, held near the top twenty of boys' names from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, and has been easing down, unhurried, ever since. A thousand years of kings, and its widest kingdom turned out to be the American classrooms of the seventies and eighties.
Eric around the world
One shared root links 7 names across 3 languages.
Shared root: from Old Norse Eiríkr, traditionally "ever-ruler", carried by Vikings and revived by the Victorians
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Eric peaked in the 1980s.
Popularity in Brazil
63,146 people · the #490 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 3,215 · median age 18
Among people named Eric living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2000s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 3,503 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Eric
People given the name Eric in the United States span the generations: the middle half were born anywhere from 1960 to 1999. Age is the one thing the name won't tell you.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Eric deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Eric truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Eric fits with your family’s names and surname.
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