Humanverse

Nolen vs Nolia

American parents have registered 3,458 Nolens since 1880, against 572 Nolias. Nolen is still ahead, with 58 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nolen against Nolia, 1880 to 2025 0 30 60 90 120 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nolen Nolia

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 135 years in which either name was published, Nolen for 113 years and Nolia for 22 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Nolen Nolia
Total US births 3,458572
Most in one year 11019
Babies in 2025 588
Estimated living today 2,600130
Median age today 1618
Peak year 20091920
Best rank 1,511th boys2,015th girls
Rank in 2025 2,363rd10,917th
First recorded 18921880
Girls / boys 10 / 3,448572 / 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 Nolias alive today are over 18; half the Nolens are over 16. 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 Nolen Nolia
France 535

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: Nolen and Nolia.