Humanverse

Nikol vs Nikolas

American parents have registered 24,050 Nikolases since 1880, against 885 Nikols. Nikolas is still ahead, with 375 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikol 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 62 years and Nikol for 5 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nikol Nikolas
Total US births 88524,050
Most in one year 401,065
Babies in 2025 11375
Estimated living today 85024,000
Median age today 3821
Peak year 19712004
Best rank 2,064th girls301st boys
Rank in 2025 8,860th717th
First recorded 19681937
Girls / boys 885 / 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 Nikols alive today are over 38; half the Nikolases are over 21. That is 17 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 Nikol Nikolas
Poland 1,0281,906
Italy 4291,881
England and Wales 2481,380
France 40520
Belgium 7198
Ireland 10136

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: Nikol and Nikolas.