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Nikia vs Nikolas

American parents have registered 24,050 Nikolases since 1880, against 3,974 Nikias. Nikolas is still ahead, with 375 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikia 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

Of the 67 years in which either name was published, Nikolas for 59 years and Nikia for 8 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nikia Nikolas
Total US births 3,97424,050
Most in one year 3351,065
Babies in 2025 under 5375
Estimated living today 3,80024,000
Median age today 4221
Peak year 19752004
Best rank 593rd girls301st boys
Rank in 2025 unranked717th
First recorded 19711937
Girls / boys 3,728 / 24615 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Nikias alive today are over 42; half the Nikolases are over 21. That is 21 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 Nikia Nikolas
England and Wales 141,380

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: Nikia and Nikolas.