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Nikita vs Nikolaos

American parents have registered 13,668 Nikitas since 1880, against 2,072 Nikolaoses. Nikita is still ahead, with 56 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikita Nikolaos

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

Nikita has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1949 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Nikita had 56 and Nikolaos had 51.

Side by side

  Nikita Nikolaos
Total US births 13,6682,072
Most in one year 1,06658
Babies in 2025 5651
Estimated living today 13,0002,000
Median age today 3221
Peak year 19862014
Best rank 250th girls2,277th boys
Rank in 2025 4,460th2,572nd
First recorded 19491962
Girls / boys 10,778 / 2,8900 / 2,072

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 Nikolaoses are over 21. That is 11 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 Nikolaos
England and Wales 3,973276
France 1,7105
Belgium 64731
Poland 60628
Switzerland 21076
Scotland 25814

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 Nikolaos.