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Nikkita vs Nikolas

American parents have registered 24,050 Nikolases since 1880, against 798 Nikkitas. Nikolas is still ahead, with 375 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikkita 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

Nikolas has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1937 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1976, when Nikkita had 13 and Nikolas had 28.

Side by side

  Nikkita Nikolas
Total US births 79824,050
Most in one year 641,065
Babies in 2025 under 5375
Estimated living today 78024,000
Median age today 3521
Peak year 19862004
Best rank 1,785th girls301st boys
Rank in 2025 unranked717th
First recorded 19721937
Girls / boys 798 / 015 / 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 Nikkitas alive today are over 35; half the Nikolases are over 21. That is 14 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Nikkita Nikolas
England and Wales 2811,380
Ireland 5136
Scotland 1291
Northern Ireland 64

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: Nikkita and Nikolas.