Humanverse

Nikita vs Niklaus

American parents have registered 13,668 Nikitas since 1880, against 2,430 Niklauses. But in 2025 it was Niklaus that was commoner, 130 babies to 56.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikita Niklaus

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 72 years in which either name was published, Nikita for 63 years and Niklaus for 9 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Nikita Niklaus
Total US births 13,6682,430
Most in one year 1,066282
Babies in 2025 56130
Estimated living today 13,0002,400
Median age today 325
Peak year 19862021
Best rank 250th girls842nd boys
Rank in 2025 4,460th1,401st
First recorded 19491979
Girls / boys 10,778 / 2,8900 / 2,430

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 Nikitas alive today are over 32; half the Niklauses are over 5. That is 27 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 Nikita Niklaus
England and Wales 3,97396
Switzerland 21095

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: Nikita and Niklaus.