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Niko vs Nikola

American parents have registered 15,135 Nikos since 1880, against 4,102 Nikolas. Niko is still ahead, with 1,065 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Niko against Nikola, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Niko Nikola

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 66 years in which either name was published, Niko for 44 years and Nikola for 22 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Niko Nikola
Total US births 15,1354,102
Most in one year 1,212159
Babies in 2025 1,065109
Estimated living today 15,0004,000
Median age today 714
Peak year 20222020
Best rank 287th boys1,237th boys
Rank in 2025 325th1,644th
First recorded 19621948
Girls / boys 506 / 14,629658 / 3,444

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 Nikolas alive today are over 14; half the Nikos are over 7. 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 Niko Nikola
Poland 33074,011
England and Wales 7682,108
France 2001,600
Switzerland 2741,262
Italy 626750
Ireland 34390
Belgium 100181
Scotland 65181
Northern Ireland 373

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: Niko and Nikola.