Humanverse

Nicole vs Nicoletta

American parents have registered 596,465 Nicoles since 1880, against 2,023 Nicolettas. Nicole is still ahead, with 803 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nicole against Nicoletta, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nicole Nicoletta

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 115 years in which either name was published, Nicole for 86 years and Nicoletta for 29 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Nicole Nicoletta
Total US births 596,4652,023
Most in one year 23,04346
Babies in 2025 80327
Estimated living today 576,0001,400
Median age today 3927
Peak year 19852000
Best rank 7th girls3,020th girls
Rank in 2025 382nd4,878th
First recorded 19371911
Girls / boys 594,500 / 1,9652,023 / 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 Nicoles alive today are over 39; half the Nicolettas are over 27. That is 12 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 Nicole Nicoletta
France 294,055235
Italy 52,0112,723
England and Wales 19,78658
Poland 6,373135
Switzerland 1,72917

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: Nicole and Nicoletta.