Eric

Eric (m) A Norse and Germanic name, meaning ‘ruler,’
perhaps ‘sole ruler.’ Although introduced to a wide public
by the novel Eric. or Little by Little (1858) by Dean
Farrar, the name only really began to be well used in
England and Wales in the 1920’s. It enjoyed a brief spell
in the limelight but soon faded. Scottish parents came to
the name a little later, and it was still 36th most
frequently used name in Scotland in 1935. By 1958 it was
down to 6oth place, and in the 1970’s it has been totally
out of fashion. The well-known philologist Eric Partridge
(born 1894) says of it in Name This Child: ‘As I discovered at school, Eric was despised as pretty-pretty.’

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