Humanverse

Nicolas vs Nikolas

American parents have registered 101,764 Nicolases since 1880, against 24,050 Nikolases. Nicolas is still ahead, with 2,053 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nicolas Nikolas

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 2004, when Nicolas had 2,880 and Nikolas had 1,065.

Side by side

  Nicolas Nikolas
Total US births 101,76424,050
Most in one year 3,0121,065
Babies in 2025 2,053375
Estimated living today 97,00024,000
Median age today 2121
Peak year 20032004
Best rank 134th boys301st boys
Rank in 2025 177th717th
First recorded 18821937
Girls / boys 179 / 101,58515 / 24,035

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.

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 Nikolas
France 406,555520
Italy 18,3621,881
Belgium 9,765198
England and Wales 3,9401,380
Switzerland 4,614210
Poland 2,4441,906
Norway 968601
Ireland 432136
Scotland 37591
Northern Ireland 564

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 Nikolas.