Erik
About 158,126 American babies have been named Erik since 1911, most of them around 1980. In 2025 it ranked 545th. About 147,000 Eriks are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 37.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Erik boys named Erik
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 158,126
- Estimated living today
- 147,000
- Median age today
- 37
- Peak year
- 1980
- Best rank
- 64th
- Rank in 2025
- 545th
- First recorded
- 1911
- Girls / boys
- 665 / 157,461
How old the living Eriks are
born that year still alive today
Of the 158,126 babies given the name since 1911, about 147,000 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 18,000 of them are children and 2,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Old Norse
A spelling variant of Eric, or directly borrowed from modern Swedish Erik.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Eriks
- Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1864–1931)Swedish poet
- Erik Satie (1866–1925)French composer and pianist
- Erik Erikson (1902–1994)American German-born psychoanalyst & essayist
- Erik the Red (950–1003)explorer and founder of the first viking settlement in Greenland
- Erik Lamela (born 1992)Argentine association football player
- Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832–1901)Finland Swedish baron, geologist, mineralogist and Arctic explorer
- Erik ten Hag (born 1970)Dutch football manager
- Erik Durm (born 1992)German association football player
People named Erik with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Erik is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Erik is most concentrated in Alaska (2.3×), California (2.0×), Washington (2.0×), Nevada (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1980
The most popular boys’ names the year Erik peaked:
Erik elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Erik | 21,898 | 17th |
| Sweden boys | Erik | 17,075 | 2nd |
| Spain boys | Erik | 13,486 | 46th |
| Italy boys | Erik | 4,382 | — |
| France boys | Erik +1 spelling | 3,120 | 225th |
| England and Wales boys | Erik | 2,129 | 310th |
| Denmark boys | Erik | 1,428 | 29th |
| Switzerland boys | Erik | 965 | 131st |
| Poland boys | Erik | 546 birth registrations | 201st |
| Belgium boys | Erik | 394 | 409th |
| Ireland boys | Erik | 312 | 252nd |
| Scotland boys | Erik | 215 | 225th |
| Austria boys | Erik | 161 | 58th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Erik | 31 | 303rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Erik: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Erik | 809 | 0.065% | 95th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Erik | 93 | 0.021% | 193rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Erik | 62 | 0.095% | 64th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Erik | 1 | 0.027% | 12th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Erik is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.09% of children were given it – 59 of them.
Erik: rank by region
In 2025, Erik was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Erik | 536 | 10 |
In 2013, Erik was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Erik | 9 | 2 |
In 2025, Erik was given 2 times or more in 9 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Erik | 144 | 7 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Erik | 164 | 2 |
| Łódzkie | Erik | 183 | 2 |
| Małopolskie | Erik | 234 | 2 |
| Mazowieckie | Erik | 180 | 8 |
| Pomorskie | Erik | 139 | 6 |
| Śląskie | Erik | 254 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Erik | 215 | 3 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Erik | 168 | 2 |
In 2023, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Erik appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (266th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Erik by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 521 | 35th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Erik among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Erik | 28,727 | 34,811 |
| Finland boys | Erik | 4,138 | 25,109 |
| the Netherlands girls | Erik | — | 97 |
| Finland girls | Erik | — | 11 |
Among boys in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 25,109 who carry it, 4,138 go by it.
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Erik lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 18,179 men called Erik were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Araba/Álava | Erik | 287 | 1.704 | 111 |
| Gipuzkoa | Erik | 605 | 1.688 | 115 |
| Bizkaia | Erik | 761 | 1.347 | 129 |
| Barcelona | Erik | 3,593 | 1.232 | 130 |
| Tarragona | Erik | 497 | 1.134 | 145 |
| Rioja, La | Erik | 161 | 0.999 | 141 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Erik against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.