Humanverse

Eric vs Erick

American parents have registered 893,184 Erics since 1880, against 79,880 Ericks. Eric is still ahead, with 1,256 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Eric against Erick, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Eric Erick

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

Eric has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1890, when Eric had 13 and Erick had 10.

Side by side

  Eric Erick
Total US births 893,18479,880
Most in one year 23,7192,437
Babies in 2025 1,256879
Estimated living today 797,00076,000
Median age today 4423
Peak year 19702007
Best rank 18th boys166th boys
Rank in 2025 273rd366th
First recorded 18801883
Girls / boys 4,293 / 888,891417 / 79,463

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 Erics alive today are over 44; half the Ericks are over 23. That is 21 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 Eric Erick
France 321,1806,910
England and Wales 6,954353
Ireland 3,62153
Italy 2,402367
Switzerland 1,65551
Scotland 7354
Belgium 65310
Poland 48215

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: Eric and Erick.