Humanverse

Nickolas vs Nicolle

American parents have registered 39,403 Nickolases since 1880, against 6,077 Nicolles. Nickolas is still ahead, with 118 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nickolas Nicolle

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 132 years in which either name was published, Nickolas for 127 years and Nicolle for 5 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Nickolas Nicolle
Total US births 39,4036,077
Most in one year 1,156216
Babies in 2025 11865
Estimated living today 35,0005,900
Median age today 2937
Peak year 19981970
Best rank 259th boys712th girls
Rank in 2025 1,492nd2,645th
First recorded 18821957
Girls / boys 47 / 39,3566,077 / 0

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 Nicolles alive today are over 37; half the Nickolases are over 29. That is 8 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 Nickolas Nicolle
France 7510,815
England and Wales 207188
Scotland 9334
Ireland 448
Poland 147

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: Nickolas and Nicolle.