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Nikolaos vs Nikolas

American parents have registered 24,050 Nikolases since 1880, against 2,072 Nikolaoses. Nikolas is still ahead, with 375 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikolaos 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 68 years in which either name was published, Nikolas for 66 years and Nikolaos for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Nikolaos Nikolas
Total US births 2,07224,050
Most in one year 581,065
Babies in 2025 51375
Estimated living today 2,00024,000
Median age today 2121
Peak year 20142004
Best rank 2,277th boys301st boys
Rank in 2025 2,572nd717th
First recorded 19621937
Girls / boys 0 / 2,07215 / 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.

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 Nikolaos Nikolas
Poland 281,906
England and Wales 2761,380
France 5520
Switzerland 76210
Belgium 31198
Scotland 1491

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: Nikolaos and Nikolas.