Nicanor
Nicanor reached its high-water mark in 1982 at number 2,426, and has been recorded 787 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 2023. About 620 Nicanors are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 36.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Nicanor
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 787
- Estimated living today
- 620
- Median age today
- 36
- Peak year
- 1982
- Best rank
- 2,426th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1913
How old the living Nicanors are
born that year still alive today
Of the 787 babies given the name since 1913, about 620 are alive — 79 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1989 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Ancient Greek
From Ancient Greek Nικάνωρ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Nicanors
- Nicanor Parra (1914–2018)Chilean writer, poet, mathematician, and physicist
- Nicanor Duarte (born 1956)46.° President of Paraguay
- Nicanor the Deacon (1–76)Ancient Roman saint
- Nicanor de Carvalho (1947–2018)Brazilian association football player and manager
- Nicanor (400 BC–309 BC)Antigonid Governor of Media
- Nicanor Zabaleta (1907–1993)Spanish-Basque harpist
- Nicanor Perlas (1950–2025)Filipino politician
- Nicanor of Stageira (400 BC–400 BC)Macedonian officer
People named Nicanor with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Nicanor is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Nicanor is most concentrated in Texas (7.3×), California (4.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1982
The most popular boys’ names the year Nicanor peaked:
Nicanor elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Nicanor | 5 | 5,217th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Nicanor among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Nicanor | — | 5 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Nicanor lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,965 men called Nicanor were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| León | Nicanor | 112 | 0.514 | 222 |
| Asturias | Nicanor | 216 | 0.446 | 239 |
| Ourense | Nicanor | 64 | 0.436 | 247 |
| Zamora | Nicanor | 28 | 0.342 | 296 |
| Salamanca | Nicanor | 46 | 0.289 | 329 |
| Lugo | Nicanor | 33 | 0.209 | 382 |
Listed in 48 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 4 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Nicanor against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.