Meaning & Origin
A diminutive of the male given name Richard.
Ricky is a boy's and girl's baby name of Germanic origin, a diminutive of Richard — from the Old High German Richart, combining rih ("ruler, king") and hard ("brave, hardy"), meaning "brave ruler." Ricky developed as a distinctly American informal given name in the mid-20th century.
Ricky was in the U.S. top 25 boys' names during the 1950s, partly boosted by the enormous popularity of Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy. Ricky Martin reinvented the name for a Latin-pop generation in the late 1990s. It's a name with unmistakable personality — warm, high-energy, and impossible to take too seriously.