Friedrich
Language: English
Part of speech: name
Forms: form: Friedrichs
form: Friedriches
Etymology: Borrowed from German Friedrich.
Senses: examples: text: As it happened, also, the particular Friedrichs and Wilhelms whom he meant to see and confer with were out of town, or had moved their habitats, so that he could not easily find them. […] “I beg your pardon, but can you tell me where Friedrich Baum lives?”
ref: 1872 December, Edward E[verett] Hale, “Ups and Downs”, in Old and New, volume VI, number 6, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, […], chapter XXVI, pages 689–690:
text: The dour Friedrich Wilhelm I, never out of uniform, accumulating tax income from a dozen different unconstitutional sources, takes time out from drilling his grenadiers to smash an inefficient postillion over the head with his cane. The sleepless Friedrich der Grosse, an atheist Calvin, rises at 6 a.m. to write the day’s orders to his bureaucrats, a shining example to the world of “enlightened despotism.” Even the feckless Friedrich Wilhelm III, defeated by a French revolutionary army, appoints a minister to tell him “Your majesty must do from above what the French have done from below.” […] When the king contemplated (God forbid) his abdication on the issue, Bismarck threw himself into the breach, accepted the office of Chancellor, defied the parliament, and collected the tax, just as the Friedrichs and Wilhelms had done before the French Revolution interrupted the course of progress.
ref: 1983, William R[omeyn] Everdell, The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans, New York, N.Y.: The Free Press, →ISBN, page 250:
text: The king’s palace, abode of all the Friedrichs and Wilhelms, had stood there, too, vacated after World War One, discreetly ignored by Hitler, bombed by the Allies in 1945, and finally demolished by the communists.
ref: 2001, James Howard Kunstler, The City in Mind: Meditations on the Urban Condition, New York, N.Y.: The Free Press, →ISBN, page 116:
text: Eventually it [the law faculty] chose Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802–1861) – born Joel Golson (or Jolson). […] [Abraham] Uhlfelder’s activities were also efficient in assuring Joel’s (and other Jews’) admission to the renowned Protestant school, the Wilhelm Gymnasium.⁹⁶ It was there that Joel became acquainted with Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer – the Bannerträger des Neuhumanismus – and with the philosopher and [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe’s friend Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Joel also developed a special relationship with Friedrich Wilhelm Tiersch during his Gymnasium years. […] Clearly, his choice of a new name shows what it must have felt like to be a Joel surrounded by so many Friedrichs and Wilhelms.
ref: 2013, Reut Yael Paz, “Jews, Universities and International Law”, in A Gateway between a Distant God and a Cruel World: The Contribution of Jewish German-Speaking Scholars to International Law (The Erik Castrén Institute Monographs on International Law and Human Rights; 16), Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, →ISBN, section 3 (Jewish Legal Denkstil/Denkkollektiv as Gateways in German Law Faculties), subsection 2 (Friedrich Julius Stahl: The ‘Paul’ of the 19th Century), pages 105–106:
text: Kaufmann goes so far in this as to state that what happened to two famous Friedriches—Hölderlin and Nietzsche—in their later years (madness and vegetation, respectively) does not really matter since their works had by then been done.
ref: 2022, Andrew Oberg, “(Honestly) Facing Finitude”, in The Christ Is Dead, Long Live the Christ: A Philotheologic Prayer, a Hermeneutics of Healing, Eugene, Ore.: Resource Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN, part 4 (Temporality: God/“God” Here, “the Kingdom” Now), page 200:
text: The other option – typified by the unapologetically noncharismatic leaders of Britain and Germany, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor Friedrich Merz – has been to persuade the electorate they’ll work hard to deliver sustainable policy results on issues like immigration, and above all, economic growth, in a way that tub-thumping populists simply cannot.
ref: 2025 July 24, Ned Temko, “In Japan, too, voters want their country to be ‘great again’”, in The Christian Science Monitor, archived from the original on 27 Jul 2025:
glosses: A male given name from German, equivalent to English Frederick.
examples: text: It has been learned that mr. blair maintains a second savings account, under the name george friedrich, at Leclair & Cie of Geneva, Switz. […] A search of the photo files showed of the George Friedriches in the United States who hold passports, none bears the remotest physical resemblance to Mr. Blair.
ref: 1979, Tony Chiu, Port Arthur Chicken, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, Inc., →ISBN, pages 107 and 139:
text: We met our landlords-to-be, Frau and Herr Friedrich, themselves émigrés from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. […] When my mother arrived and we brought her to our attic home, she immediately made friends with our landlords and was able to converse in a form of German that the Friedriches easily understood.
ref: 2015, Joel M. Levin, Our Beguine: The Dance of Life, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN:
glosses: A surname from German.