Eric

767,096 people in America carry this name — ranked #41 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation X.

Say it EH rihk

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

EH1 R IH0 K — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 767,096 2020 Census
  • Rank #41 Very common
  • Per 100,000 254.0 about 1 in 432 people
  • As a surname 663 ranked #36,342 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Eric

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “ever king”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Eric name popularity by year

885,635 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1970, with 23,717 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70s 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1970s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Eric

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Eric Christopher — runs together
  • Eric Charles — runs together
  • Eric Kevin — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Eric has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to Generation X.

Is Eric used for boys or for girls?

99.8% men
1,167 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The states where Eric is most common

In the District of Columbia the name is given 1.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • the District of Columbia ×1.6
  • Vermont ×1.6
  • Delaware ×1.4
  • New Hampshire ×1.3
  • Rhode Island ×1.3

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 66.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 12.0%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 14.0%
  • Two or more races — 2.8%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 4.0%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.5%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Same syllables and stress as Eric

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The same name elsewhere

  • Eryk Polish
  • Erik Slov
  • Arch Slov
  • Erika Swedish
  • Erich Russ.|Ger
  • Eirik Norwegian

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin