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

Languages: This boy's name is used in Italian.

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.