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Nickolas vs Nicol

American parents have registered 39,403 Nickolases since 1880, against 2,248 Nicols. Nickolas is still ahead, with 118 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nickolas against Nicol, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nickolas 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

Of the 132 years in which either name was published, Nickolas for 130 years and Nicol for 2 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nickolas Nicol
Total US births 39,4032,248
Most in one year 1,156130
Babies in 2025 11816
Estimated living today 35,0002,200
Median age today 2944
Peak year 19981970
Best rank 259th boys997th girls
Rank in 2025 1,492nd6,838th
First recorded 18821956
Girls / boys 47 / 39,3562,220 / 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 Nickolases are over 29. That is 15 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 Nickolas Nicol
Poland 14851
England and Wales 207319
France 75125
Scotland 9157
Ireland 438

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: Nickolas and Nicol.