Humanverse

Nichole vs Nicki

American parents have registered 63,954 Nicholes since 1880, against 6,380 Nickis. Nichole is still ahead, with 46 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nichole against Nicki, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nichole Nicki

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 92 years in which either name was published, Nichole for 60 years and Nicki for 32 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Nichole Nicki
Total US births 63,9546,380
Most in one year 2,962190
Babies in 2025 46under 5
Estimated living today 62,0005,600
Median age today 4152
Peak year 19851972
Best rank 95th girls734th girls
Rank in 2025 3,342ndunranked
First recorded 19421923
Girls / boys 63,770 / 1846,083 / 297

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 Nickis alive today are over 52; half the Nicholes are over 41. That is 11 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 Nichole Nicki
England and Wales 21055
Scotland 6838

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: Nichole and Nicki.