Humanverse

Erik vs Eris

American parents have registered 158,126 Eriks since 1880, against 3,343 Erises. Erik is still ahead, with 549 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Erik Eris

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

Of the 114 years in which either name was published, Erik for 102 years and Eris for 12 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Erik Eris
Total US births 158,1263,343
Most in one year 4,959236
Babies in 2025 549154
Estimated living today 147,0002,600
Median age today 3710
Peak year 19801923
Best rank 64th boys457th girls
Rank in 2025 545th1,622nd
First recorded 19111913
Girls / boys 665 / 157,4612,805 / 538

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 Erises are over 10. That is 27 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 Eris
France 3,120145
England and Wales 2,129411
Switzerland 965199
Scotland 2156

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 Eris.