Niles vs Nils
American parents have registered 4,455 Nileses since 1880, against 3,083 Nilses. Niles is still ahead, with 54 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Niles Nils
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 119 years in which either name was published, Niles for 93 years and Nils for 26 years. The lead changed hands 19 times.
- 1916–1931 Niles ahead
- 1932–1936 Nils ahead
- 1937–1960 Niles ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1961–1972 Nils ahead
- 1973–2025 Niles ahead, apart from 2 short spells
12 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Niles | Nils | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 4,455 | 3,083 |
| Most in one year | 80 | 48 |
| Babies in 2025 | 54 | 20 |
| Estimated living today | 3,200 | 2,100 |
| Median age today | 31 | 41 |
| Peak year | 1998 | 1970 |
| Best rank | 1,418th boys | 1,192nd boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 2,480th | 4,857th |
| First recorded | 1897 | 1888 |
| Girls / boys | 0 / 4,455 | 0 / 3,083 |
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 Nilses alive today are over 41; half the Nileses are over 31. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Niles California (3.3×), New York (3.2×), Pennsylvania (2.2×)
- Nils New York (5.8×), California (3.8×), Minnesota (2.2×)
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 | Niles | Nils |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 61 | 150 |
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: Niles and Nils.