Erich
A Germanic name built from two words, "ever" and "ruler": an eternal ruler. The German spelling, with its final -ch, reads as foreign in Poland, where only around 230 men carry it and most people have never met one.
Erich Pronunciation
Erich is pronounced E-reekh (/ˈɛrix/).
What Erich means
Where Erich comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Erich is a Germanic name, and its two halves tell you what it once described. One part means "ever" or "eternal." The other means "ruler." Together they give the sense of an eternal ruler, in Polish wieczny władca.
The same root produced Eric in English and Erik across Scandinavia, all descended from the old Norse Eiríkr. The spelling Erich, with its final -ch, is German. Erich Maria Remarque printed it on the cover of All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929. He was born Erich Paul Remark in Osnabrück in 1898, and later reshaped his own name. Erich Kästner, who wrote Emil and the Detectives, gave it to generations of German readers.
On a Polish class register the name reads as foreign. That foreignness is part of what it offers. A boy called Erich holds a German spelling of an idea older than the German language, the idea of a ruler whose power does not end.
How many people are named Erich
1 in 92810 men in Poland is named Erich. 230 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2052 among male names.
Erich as a middle name
Erich is a first name for 230 men in Poland and a middle name for another 192, a 55/45 split, almost evenly. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 491st, between Claude (192) and Raymond (192).
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#489 Sambor193
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#490 Claude192
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#491 Erich192
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#492 Raymond192
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#493 Tristan192