Niel
About 1,384 American babies have been named Niel since 1913, most of them around 1958. In 2025 it ranked 12,008th. About 870 Niels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 51.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Niel
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,384
- Estimated living today
- 870
- Median age today
- 51
- Peak year
- 1958
- Best rank
- 1,534th
- Rank in 2025
- 12,008th
- First recorded
- 1913
How old the living Niels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,384 babies given the name since 1913, about 870 are alive — 63 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1974 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 Niel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Niel is most concentrated in New York (7.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1958
The most popular boys’ names the year Niel peaked:
Niel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium boys | Niel | 608 | 328th |
| France boys | Niel | 75 | 6,525th |
| Switzerland boys | Niel | 58 | 865th |
| Ireland boys | Niel | 16 | 216th |
| Scotland boys | Niel | 10 | 266th |
| England and Wales boys | Niel | 3 | 4,747th |
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.
Niel: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Niel | 54 | 0.004% | 701st |
| French boys | Switzerland | Niel | 4 | 0.001% | 591st |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Niel: rank by region
In 2025, Niel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Niel | 714 | 7 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Niel appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (193rd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Related names
Niel 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.