Humanverse

Nick vs Nicklaus

American parents have registered 50,589 Nicks since 1880, against 3,462 Nicklauses. Nick is still ahead, with 124 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nick Nicklaus

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 146 years in which either name was published, Nick for 145 years and Nicklaus for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nick Nicklaus
Total US births 50,5893,462
Most in one year 1,098156
Babies in 2025 12411
Estimated living today 27,0003,300
Median age today 5629
Peak year 19601997
Best rank 242nd boys886th boys
Rank in 2025 1,443rd7,194th
First recorded 18801964
Girls / boys 132 / 50,4570 / 3,462

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 Nicklauses are over 29. That is 27 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 Nick Nicklaus
England and Wales 4426

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: Nick and Nicklaus.