Richard
Meaning
brave ruler
Goes by Dick, Rich, Richie, Rick, and 1 more
Famously borne by Richard Bachman, the name Stephen King improvised from a novel on his desk and a band on the record player.
The story
Richard is old Germanic power compressed into two syllables: ric, ruler, and hard, brave or strong, together a brave ruler. The Normans carried it to England, where Richard the Lionheart made it a crusader king's name in the twelfth century, and it never really left the English-speaking world after that. Its American century built steadily from the start and crested at midcentury: through the 1940s and 1950s Richard sat among the most given boys' names in the country, with Dick, Rick, and Richie trailing behind it on every playground. The slide since the 1970s has been long and unhurried, the usual fate of a name so thoroughly claimed by one generation of fathers and grandfathers. What remains is bedrock: a thousand years of history in a name that still means exactly what it says.
Richard's name family
One shared root links 7 names across 2 languages.
Shared root: from Germanic Ricohard, ric "power" + hard "brave, hardy"
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Richard peaked in the 1940s and the 1950s in nearly equal measure.
Popularity in Brazil
67,614 people · the #453 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 3,003 · median age 17
Among people named Richard living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2000s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 4,437 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Richard
Most people given the name Richard in the United States were born between 1950 and 1989. The Richard you meet today is most often in his 50s or 60s.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Richard deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Richard 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 Richard fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Nicknames for Richard · Vietnamese American baby names · Pen names and the names writers chose
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