Rick
Meaning
powerful ruler (nickname for Richard); immortalized by Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942)
The story
Rick is Richard stripped for action, an old Germanic royal name meaning powerful ruler, cut down to one confident syllable. Its immortal bearer is Rick Blaine, the nightclub owner Humphrey Bogart played in Casablanca in 1942, the cynic in the white dinner jacket who insists he looks out only for himself and then proves otherwise. Before the 1920s Rick barely appears in American records as a name in its own right; after the war it took off, and its biggest decades were the 1950s and 1960s, when Casablanca's afterglow, the teen idol Ricky Nelson and a broad fashion for breezy nicknames all overlapped. Which of them did the real work is impossible to untangle, but the rise sits right there on the chart. Rick has eased since to a steady, modest level: short, midcentury cool, forever leaning on a piano in Morocco.
The formal names behind Rick
Rick is an established short form of this name.
Richard · Germanic origin · brave ruler
Rick'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. Rick peaked in the 1950s and the 1960s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
3,557 people · the #3,473 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 55,556 · median age 19
Among people named Rick living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2000s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 248 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Rick
Most people given the name Rick in the United States were born between 1950 and 1979. The Rick 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 Rick deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Rick 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 Rick fits with your family’s names and surname.
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