Meaning: Its source is ei rikr, an Old Norse name meaning "Complete ruler."

Languages: This boy's name is used in German and English.

Popularity: The name Erich ranked 808th in popularity for males of all ages in a sample of the 1990 US Census.

Narrative: Eric the Red, Norse colonizer of Greenland and father to the explorer Leif Ericson, may spring to mind upon encountering this name in any one of its popular spellings -- Eric, Erik or Erick.

However, the name was not widely used among English-speaking people until 19th-century British fiction writers Frederic Farrar (in Eric, or Little by Little) and H. Rider Haggard (in Eric Brighteyes) used it in popular literature.