Erie
Masculine
Erie is given to both — 1,958 boys and 1,482 girls since 1880. See Erie as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Lake Erie is named after a people who were gone before most of the lake was mapped. The Erie lived south of it and were dispersed by the Iroquois in the middle of the seventeenth century; almost nothing of their language survives, and what their own name for themselves meant is now guesswork. The lake kept the word, and American parents in the nineteenth century took it from the lake.
How old is the name Erie?
Erie was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Erie alive today was born around 1968, making them about 57 years old. About 1,400 people named Erie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Erie most popular?
Erie peaked in 1880, reaching #809 nationally. See the whole 1880 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Erie
The Erie were an Iroquoian-speaking people of the southern shore, and the Haudenosaunee destroyed or absorbed them in a series of campaigns in the 1650s; survivors were adopted into other nations. The lake carried their name into English, and the Erie Canal carried it further — it was the great engineering fact of early American life, and the word turns up on maps, counties and towns all over the northeast. Naming children after it belongs to the same nineteenth-century habit that produced Alma, Vesta and Ada, and the record here begins with the very first American statistics.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The name of the Erie people is recorded by French missionaries in a form usually read as long tail, thought to refer to a wildcat or panther — which is why early French maps call it the lake of the cat. That reading rests on a small amount of evidence gathered second-hand, and it cannot be treated as established. The people's own language is essentially lost.
Pronouncing Erie
EER-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first. It is said exactly like the lake, and identically to the English word eerie, which is a coincidence and a permanent one.
Nicknames for Erie
Limited
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 197081 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #809reached in 1880
- Change vs 2000
- +16.7%7 in 2002, from 6
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Eries among us
people named Erie are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Erie sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Everyone can say it and spell it after hearing it once, because everyone has seen the lake on a map.
- Four letters and two open syllables — it fits anywhere.
- It names a real place with a documented and consequential history.
- It is recorded for boys as well as girls, though nearly all are girls.
- It is a homophone of eerie, meaning strange or unsettling, and that will come up.
- It carries the name of a people who were destroyed, which is worth knowing rather than discovering later.
- It reads as a place name first to most Americans, particularly in the northeast.
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Erie
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Eries are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,400 people named Erie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Erie in 2025?
- Erie is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Erie with classmates?
- Erie will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More E names
The most-given names starting with E, all years combined.
Edward#224 · Eric#273 · Ethan#24 · Eugene#943 · Elijah#7 · Ernest#1038 · Earl#2230 · Evan#153
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Erie? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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