Roderick comes from the Germanic Hrodric and means "famous ruler" or "famous power", from hrod, fame, and ric, ruler. It was the name of the last Visigothic king of Spain, where it became Rodrigo, and Sir Walter Scott's poems kept it alive in Scotland. Roderick stood at number 615 in the United States in 2000, its best year in the data, and has fallen out of the top 1000 to number 1752 among boys' names in 2025.