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Nicolas vs Nicoletta

American parents have registered 101,764 Nicolases since 1880, against 2,023 Nicolettas. Nicolas is still ahead, with 2,053 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nicolas Nicoletta

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

Nicolas has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1911, when Nicolas had 9 and Nicoletta had 9.

Side by side

  Nicolas Nicoletta
Total US births 101,7642,023
Most in one year 3,01246
Babies in 2025 2,05327
Estimated living today 97,0001,400
Median age today 2127
Peak year 20032000
Best rank 134th boys3,020th girls
Rank in 2025 177th4,878th
First recorded 18821911
Girls / boys 179 / 101,5852,023 / 0

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 Nicolettas alive today are over 27; half the Nicolases are over 21. That is 6 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 Nicolas Nicoletta
France 406,555235
Italy 18,3622,723
Switzerland 4,61417
England and Wales 3,94058
Poland 2,444135

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: Nicolas and Nicoletta.