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Nikolas vs Nikos

American parents have registered 24,050 Nikolases since 1880, against 882 Nikoses. Nikolas is still ahead, with 375 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikolas Nikos

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 67 years and Nikos for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nikolas Nikos
Total US births 24,050882
Most in one year 1,06528
Babies in 2025 37512
Estimated living today 24,000850
Median age today 2123
Peak year 20042009
Best rank 301st boys3,721st boys
Rank in 2025 717th6,803rd
First recorded 19371962
Girls / boys 15 / 24,0350 / 882

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 Nikoses alive today are over 23; half the Nikolases are over 21. That is 2 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 Nikolas Nikos
Poland 1,90631
England and Wales 1,380101
France 52060
Belgium 19810

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: Nikolas and Nikos.