Erica

Where the name comes from

• Old Norse, through English and Scandinavian use
  Feminine form of Eric. Its second part means "ruler" or "king." Scholars disagree on the first part: "ever," "honor," or "one, only."
  Eiríkr (Old Norse): ei- + -ríkr "ruler, power"
  Erica is the feminine form of Eric. Eric comes from the Old Norse name Eiríkr. Sources agree that the ending means "ruler" or "power." They split on the beginning. Charlotte Yonge (1884) linked it to the old word "aye," meaning "ever," and glossed the name as "ever king." The Dictionary of American Family Names also reads it as "ever, always." It adds that it may instead be a shortened form of a word meaning "one only." The Online Etymology Dictionary reads it as "honor," so the name means "honored ruler." The safest summary is "ruler," with "ever ruler" the most often cited reading.
• Latin, from Greek (popular association)
  Popular association: "heather." This is a separate word that happens to look the same. It is not the source of the given name.
  erica (Modern Latin plant genus), from Greek ereike "tree heather"
  Erica is also the scientific name for the heaths and heathers. That plant name comes from Greek, not from Old Norse. Many people link the girl's name to the flower, but sources trace the name itself to Eric.

Erica across traditions

• Scandinavian. The masculine Eirik was a royal name across the Nordic kingdoms. Yonge noted that it came up again and again among the northern rulers. The feminine Erika was in use in Sweden by Yonge's time.
• United States. Erica was most popular in the 1980s. It ranked #36 among girls' names for that decade, with about 93,000 births. The spelling Erika ranked #76 in the same decade.
• Popular symbolism. Because of the plant genus Erica, many people tie the name to heather. This is a later association, not the name's origin.

Who carried it

• Erica Jong (born 1942): American writer. Her best-known novel is Fear of Flying (1973), a groundbreaking feminist novel.

Forms in other languages

Erika, Ericka, Érica, Érika

Erica in letter-number systems

Hebrew, Greek and other traditions gave every letter a number, and read meaning into the totals. These are the counts, computed; the readings are inside the Innerverse.