Eric Is Not in the Bible — It Means “Ever-Ruler”

Eric is not in the Bible, in any spelling. It is the Old Norse name Eiríkr, which means “ever ruler,” and Erick, Erik and Erich are forms of the same name.

What does Eric mean?

Eric means “ever ruler” or “eternal ruler.” Eiríkr joins two Old Norse words: ei, “ever, always,” and ríkr, “ruler, king.” The name has spread across Europe in local forms, among them Éric in French, Érico in Portuguese, Eirik in Norwegian and Eiríkur in Icelandic.

Danish settlers first brought the name to England during the Anglo-Saxon period, but it was not popular there in the Middle Ages. It came back in the nineteenth century, helped in part by Frederic William Farrar’s children’s novel Eric, or Little by Little (1858).

Eric the Red

The best-known early bearer was Eiríkr inn rauði, Eric the Red (about 950 to about 1003). Around 982 he was outlawed from Iceland for three years after a series of killings, and he spent his exile exploring Greenland. In 985 he returned with colonists and founded the first European settlement there, which lasted until the fifteenth century. According to the Icelandic sagas, his wife Thjodhild and his son Leif became Christians, and Thjodhild commissioned Greenland’s first church, but Eric kept to the Norse gods. Several early kings of Sweden, Denmark and Norway also bore the name.

Is Eric in the Bible?

No. The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and Eric comes from Old Norse, so the name has no biblical form and no meaning in Hebrew. No person in Scripture is called Eric or anything close to it.

Saint Eric of Sweden

The name’s saint is Eric IX, also called Erik Jedvardsson, king of Sweden from about 1156. In May 1160 a Danish prince, Magnus Henriksen, who had his own claim to the throne, brought an army against him near Uppsala. According to the legend of his life, Eric was at Mass on the Feast of the Ascension when the enemy approached; he heard the Mass to the end, then armed himself and the few men with him and went out to meet them, and he was killed. In 1273 his relics were moved to the new cathedral of Uppsala, built on the site of his death. The Roman Martyrology remembers him on 18 May, and he is the patron saint of Sweden and of Stockholm, whose coat of arms shows his crowned head.

Eric as a baptismal name

Eric can be given at baptism. The Catholic Church does not require a name to come from the Bible; canon law asks only that parents, sponsors and the pastor “take care that a name foreign to Christian sensibility is not given” (Canon 855), and Eric is a saint’s name. In the Orthodox Church a child is usually baptized with the name of a saint on the Orthodox calendar, so a family choosing Eric should ask the priest which name will be used at the baptism.

“Ever ruler” in the New Testament

The one ruler the New Testament calls eternal is Jesus, whose kingdom the angel Gabriel announced to Mary before his birth: “he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:33). The second letter to Timothy promises believers a share in that reign: “if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12).

Related reading

• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names