Nikolai vs Nikolaus

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Nikolai Nikolaus

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 65 years in which either name was published, Nikolai for 43 years and Nikolaus for 22 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1955 Nikolaus ahead
• 1960–1965 Nikolai ahead
• 1966–1968 Nikolaus ahead
• 1969–1977 Nikolai ahead
• 1978–1995 Nikolaus ahead
• 1996 Nikolai ahead
• 1997 Nikolaus ahead
• 1998–2025 Nikolai ahead

Side by side

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 Nikolauses alive today are over 29; half the Nikolais are over 10. That is 19 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Nikolai Nevada (3.3×), Arizona (2.4×), Florida (2.3×)
• Nikolaus California (4.2×), Wisconsin (2.2×), Texas (1.8×)

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.

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

• Nikolai vs Nikki
• Nikolai vs Nikolas
• Nikolai vs Niko
• Nikolai vs Nikita
• Nikolai vs Niki
• Nikolai vs Nikole
• Nikolaus vs Nikki
• Nikolaus vs Nikolas