Meaning and history
Éric means “ever ruler” and comes from the Old Norse name Eiríkr, formed from ei “ever, always” and ríkr “ruler, king.” Notable bearers included Eiríkr inn Rauda, or Eric the Red, the 10th-century navigator and explorer credited with discovering Greenland, and several early kings of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway also bore the name. A common Norse name, it first reached England with Danish settlers in the Anglo-Saxon period, remained unpopular there in the Middle Ages, and was revived in the 19th century partly through Frederic William Farrar’s children’s novel Eric, or Little by Little (1858).
20062006: 6,232 births, rank #77
2007: 5,959 births, rank #83
2008: 5,377 births, rank #86
2009: 4,646 births, rank #95
2010: 4,201 births, rank #95
20112011: 3,751 births, rank #104
2012: 3,637 births, rank #107
2013: 3,265 births, rank #118
2014: 3,323 births, rank #122
2015: 3,046 births, rank #138
20162016: 2,930 births, rank #142
2017: 2,782 births, rank #143
2018: 2,410 births, rank #160
2019: 2,205 births, rank #176
2020: 1,917 births, rank #198
20212021: 1,790 births, rank #213
2022: 1,561 births, rank #229
2023: 1,547 births, rank #227
2024: 1,406 births, rank #252
20252025: 1,256 births, rank #273
Eric moved from #252 to #273 for boys between 2024 and 2025. Its highest annual birth count came in 1970, with 23,571 births.