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Niva vs Nivea

American parents have registered 1,331 Niveas since 1880, against 526 Nivas. But in 2025 it was Niva that was commoner, 38 babies to 10.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Niva against Nivea, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Niva Nivea

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 58 years in which either name was published, Nivea for 40 years and Niva for 18 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Niva Nivea
Total US births 5261,331
Most in one year 3892
Babies in 2025 3810
Estimated living today 4901,300
Median age today 1017
Peak year 20252003
Best rank 3,832nd girls1,970th girls
Rank in 2025 3,832nd9,457th
First recorded 19131975
Girls / boys 526 / 01,331 / 0

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 Niveas alive today are over 17; half the Nivas are over 10. That is 7 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 Niva Nivea
England and Wales 1123

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: Niva and Nivea.