Humanverse

Erik vs Eryk

American parents have registered 158,126 Eriks since 1880, against 1,053 Eryks. Erik is still ahead, with 549 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Erik against Eryk, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Erik Eryk

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Erik has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1911 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2017, when Erik had 901 and Eryk had 27.

Side by side

  Erik Eryk
Total US births 158,1261,053
Most in one year 4,95951
Babies in 2025 5496
Estimated living today 147,0001,000
Median age today 3722
Peak year 19802001
Best rank 64th boys2,050th boys
Rank in 2025 545th10,695th
First recorded 19111976
Girls / boys 665 / 157,4610 / 1,053

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Eriks alive today are over 37; half the Eryks are over 22. That is 15 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Erik Eryk
Poland 54620,902
France 3,12035
England and Wales 2,129696
Ireland 312154
Belgium 3946
Scotland 21544
Northern Ireland 3113

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Erik and Eryk.