Humanverse

Nic vs Nick

American parents have registered 50,589 Nicks since 1880, against 77 Nics. Nick is still ahead, with 124 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nic Nick

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

Nick has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2015, when Nic had 5 and Nick had 152.

Side by side

  Nic Nick
Total US births 7750,589
Most in one year 101,098
Babies in 2025 under 5124
Estimated living today 7027,000
Median age today 4856
Peak year 19771960
Best rank 3,606th boys242nd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,443rd
First recorded 19611880
Girls / boys 0 / 77132 / 50,457

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 Nicks alive today are over 56; half the Nics are over 48. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Nic Nick
Switzerland 2052,207
Belgium 202,233

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: Nic and Nick.