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Nika vs Nikolas

American parents have registered 24,050 Nikolases since 1880, against 2,502 Nikas. Nikolas is still ahead, with 375 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nika Nikolas

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 68 years in which either name was published, Nikolas for 66 years and Nika for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Nika Nikolas
Total US births 2,50224,050
Most in one year 771,065
Babies in 2025 50375
Estimated living today 2,50024,000
Median age today 1921
Peak year 20172004
Best rank 2,357th girls301st boys
Rank in 2025 3,167th717th
First recorded 19611937
Girls / boys 2,497 / 515 / 24,035

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 Nikolases alive today are over 21; half the Nikas are over 19. That is 2 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 Nika Nikolas
Poland 4091,906
England and Wales 2821,380
France 80520
Switzerland 317210
Belgium 171198
Ireland 49136

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: Nika and Nikolas.