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Niko vs Nikolaus

American parents have registered 15,135 Nikos since 1880, against 2,656 Nikolauses. Niko is still ahead, with 1,065 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Niko 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 61 years in which either name was published, Niko for 47 years and Nikolaus for 14 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Niko Nikolaus
Total US births 15,1352,656
Most in one year 1,21298
Babies in 2025 1,06524
Estimated living today 15,0002,600
Median age today 729
Peak year 20221994
Best rank 287th boys1,146th boys
Rank in 2025 325th4,249th
First recorded 19621955
Girls / boys 506 / 14,6290 / 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 Nikolauses alive today are over 29; half the Nikos are over 7. That is 22 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 Nikolaus
England and Wales 7686
Poland 33012

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 Nikolaus.