Derrick
- Pronunciation
- [De-rrick]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- People's Ruler
- Origin
- German
About the Name Derrick
Derrick descends from the Old Germanic Theodorik, composed of theod (people) and rik (ruler) — yielding "ruler of the people." The Latinate Theodoric was anglicized through the Dutch Diederik to the English Derrick. The name has been used continuously in English-speaking countries since the medieval period.
Notable bearers include the iconic American basketball player Derrick Rose (Derrick Martell Rose, born 1988, the iconic American NBA point guard who in 2011 became the youngest MVP in NBA history at age 22 — anchoring the name in early-21st-century American sports memory); American actor Derek Hough (using the related Derek spelling, born 1985, the American dancer); American filmmaker Derrick Borte; and the iconic American singer-actor Derek Jeter (using the alternate Derek spelling, born 1974, the iconic American baseball player and New York Yankees Hall of Famer).
The two related spellings (Derrick and Derek) are tracked separately by SSA. Derrick held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1976 through 1995 — about two decades of consistent American popularity, peaking around 1980 at #54 in the United States. The name has receded since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 boys' rank. The name's appeal is its layered Old Germanic-Dutch-English pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built people-ruler etymological register, the strong Derrick Rose American sports cultural anchor, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Germanic and contemporary American. Common nicknames Derk (the dominant warm short form, casual and warm), Derry, and the rare Eric each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Derrick (the more popular American form), Derek (the alternate American spelling), Derik, and Deryck have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Diederik (Dutch), Dieter (German), Theodoric (Latin), Thierry (French), and the original Old Germanic Theodorik.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Derrick
US Popularity History (1970–2025)
Annual US births named Derrick by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1980 with 4,135 boys named Derrick (boy rank #74 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #850 for boys (288 US births). That's 776 places below its 1980 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Derrick Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Derrick the strongest states are Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | #279 | 197 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #286 | 127 |
| 3 | New Mexico | #385 | 15 |
| 4 | South Carolina | #414 | 90 |
| 5 | Alabama | #421 | 122 |
| 6 | Georgia | #435 | 248 |
| 7 | Florida | #445 | 377 |
| 8 | Arkansas | #451 | 60 |
| 9 | Maryland | #459 | 99 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #502 | 182 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | #780 | 37 |
| 2 | Arizona | #725 | 63 |
| 3 | California | #708 | 343 |
| 4 | Minnesota | #699 | 40 |
| 5 | New York | #681 | 214 |
| 6 | Indiana | #669 | 84 |
| 7 | Colorado | #653 | 47 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #607 | 44 |
| 9 | Ohio | #599 | 162 |
| 10 | New Jersey | #598 | 85 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Derrick in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Derrick?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Derrick to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Derrick against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).