ICMP means Internet Control Message Protocol and is always coupled with the IP protocol (There are 2 ICMP variants one for IPv4 and one for IPv6.) echo request and echo response are the two operation codes of ICMP used to implement ping.
ICMP is Internet Control Message Protocol, a network layer protocol of the TCP/IP suite used by hosts and gateways to send notification of datagram problems back to the sender. It uses the echo test / reply to test whether a destination is reachable and responding. It also handles both control and error messages.