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Nikko vs Nikolas

American parents have registered 24,050 Nikolases since 1880, against 4,702 Nikkos. Nikolas is still ahead, with 375 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nikko 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

Nikolas has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1937 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1972, when Nikko had 21 and Nikolas had 30.

Side by side

  Nikko Nikolas
Total US births 4,70224,050
Most in one year 2161,065
Babies in 2025 147375
Estimated living today 4,60024,000
Median age today 1421
Peak year 20212004
Best rank 1,016th boys301st boys
Rank in 2025 1,315th717th
First recorded 19701937
Girls / boys 176 / 4,52615 / 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 Nikkos are over 14. That is 7 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 Nikko Nikolas
England and Wales 271,380
Switzerland 11210

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: Nikko and Nikolas.