Erving
Masculine
Erving is an American spelling of a Scottish place name that arrived in the United States as a surname and stayed as a first name. It belongs to the oldest layer of that habit — well before the modern fashion for surname names, families were already doing this.
How old is the name Erving?
Erving first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Erving alive today was born around 1947, making them about 78 years old. About 500 people named Erving are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Erving most popular?
Erving peaked in 1881, reaching #706 nationally. See the whole 1881 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Irvine to Erving
The story of Erving
The name's American weight comes from a writer. Washington Irving, named for the general his parents' generation had just followed, was the first American to make a living from his pen, and he left more words behind him than most authors leave books. He gave New York the mocking nickname Gotham, borrowed from an English village of proverbial fools. He invented the Knickerbocker, a fictional Dutch historian whose name became the word for a New Yorker and then for a basketball team. He wrote the sketches that fixed Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman in the American imagination, and the version of Christmas he described helped shape the one the country later adopted.
Meaningscholars disagree
From the Scottish place and river called Irvine
The surname comes from Irvine or Irving in southwest Scotland, and the place is named from its river, whose own name is older than any language now spoken there. A German name, Erwin, meaning something like army friend, merged into the same English spelling, so a particular family's Erving may have come by either road.
How the name formed
- Irvine
- Irving
- Erving
Pronouncing Erving
UR-ving
Two syllables, stress at the front. The E spelling and the I spelling are said identically; English merged this vowel centuries ago.
Nicknames for Erving
Moderate
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
- 1881
- Most boys named
- 191619 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #706reached in 1881
- Change vs 2013
- −28.6%5 in 2018, from 7
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.
Ervings among us
people named Erving 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
Erving 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
- It is a surname name with real history rather than a recent invention, which very few now are.
- The short form, Irv, is friendly and unpretentious, and the full name is formal without being fussy.
- It reads as distinctly American even though the place it names is Scottish.
- Irving is the spelling in every book and every phone directory, and his will be corrected to it.
- The name is firmly attached to an older American generation and has not yet come back around.
- Two different origins sit behind the same spelling, so the family story may not match the dictionary.
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Erving
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Ervings are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Erving are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Erving in 2025?
- Erving is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Erving with classmates?
- Erving 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 Erving? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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