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Nichole vs Nicol

American parents have registered 63,954 Nicholes since 1880, against 2,248 Nicols. Nichole is still ahead, with 46 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nichole against Nicol, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nichole Nicol

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Nichole has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1942 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1956, when Nichole had 6 and Nicol had 5.

Side by side

  Nichole Nicol
Total US births 63,9542,248
Most in one year 2,962130
Babies in 2025 4616
Estimated living today 62,0002,200
Median age today 4144
Peak year 19851970
Best rank 95th girls997th girls
Rank in 2025 3,342nd6,838th
First recorded 19421956
Girls / boys 63,770 / 1842,220 / 28

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Nicols alive today are over 44; half the Nicholes are over 41. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Nichole Nicol
England and Wales 210319
Scotland 68157
Ireland 4338

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Nichole and Nicol.