Humanverse

Nicklas vs Nicole

American parents have registered 596,465 Nicoles since 1880, against 2,430 Nicklases. Nicole is still ahead, with 803 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nicklas against Nicole, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nicklas Nicole

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

Of the 93 years in which either name was published, Nicole for 89 years and Nicklas for 4 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Nicklas Nicole
Total US births 2,430596,465
Most in one year 11123,043
Babies in 2025 7803
Estimated living today 2,300576,000
Median age today 2739
Peak year 20021985
Best rank 1,228th boys7th girls
Rank in 2025 9,714th382nd
First recorded 19141937
Girls / boys 0 / 2,430594,500 / 1,965

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 Nicoles alive today are over 39; half the Nicklases are over 27. That is 12 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 Nicklas Nicole
England and Wales 319,786
Norway 857734

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: Nicklas and Nicole.