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Nikita vs Nikolaus

American parents have registered 13,668 Nikitas since 1880, against 2,656 Nikolauses. Nikita is still ahead, with 56 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikita Nikolaus

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 73 years in which either name was published, Nikita for 72 years and Nikolaus for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nikita Nikolaus
Total US births 13,6682,656
Most in one year 1,06698
Babies in 2025 5624
Estimated living today 13,0002,600
Median age today 3229
Peak year 19861994
Best rank 250th girls1,146th boys
Rank in 2025 4,460th4,249th
First recorded 19491955
Girls / boys 10,778 / 2,8900 / 2,656

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 Nikitas alive today are over 32; half the Nikolauses are over 29. That is 3 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 Nikita Nikolaus
England and Wales 3,9736
Poland 60612

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: Nikita and Nikolaus.