Nicolas

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Nicolas boys named Nicolas

By the numbers

Total US births

101,764

Estimated living today

97,000

Median age today

21

Peak year

2003

Best rank

134th

Rank in 2025

177th

First recorded

1882

Girls / boys

179 / 101,585

How old the living Nicolases are

born that year still alive today

Of the 101,764 babies given the name since 1882, about 97,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 38,000 of them are children and 1,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2004 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Latin, from Ancient Greek

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Nicolass

• Nicolas Sarkozy (born 1955)23rd president of the French Republic from 2007 to 2012
• Nicolás Maduro (born 1962)President of Venezuela 2013 to 2026
• Nicolas Cage (born 1964)American actor
• Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665)French painter
• Nicolas Appert (1749–1841)French inventor of airtight food preservation
• Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711)French poet and critic
• Nicolas Carnot (1796–1832)French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics"
• Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat de Condorcet (1743–1794)French philosopher, mathematician, and political scientist

People named Nicolas with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Nicolas is most common

• CA21,312
• TX13,936
• FL8,677
• NY7,107
• IL4,353
• NJ3,253
• PA2,459
• AZ2,368
• MA2,359
• GA2,167

Relative to how many babies each state records, Nicolas is most concentrated in Florida (2.5×), Nevada (2.5×), California (2.1×), Arizona (1.9×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2003

The most popular boys’ names the year Nicolas peaked:

• Jacob
• Michael
• Joshua
• Matthew
• Andrew
• Joseph

All the names of 2003

Nicolas elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Nicolas: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Nicolas is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.40% of children were given it – 408 of them.

Nicolas: rank by region

In 2025, Nicolas was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium. It has come first somewhere in 5 different years.

In 2024, Nicolas was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

In 2023, Nicolas was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Nicolas was given 2 times or more in 12 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Nicolas appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (114th), Province of Flemish Brabant (132nd), Province of Antwerp (251st) and Province of East Flanders (264th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Nicolas by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Nicolas among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Nicolas lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 65,659 men called Nicolas were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Nicholas
• Nicole
• Nichole
• Nick
• Nickolas
• Nico
• Nicolette
• Nicky
• Nicola
• Nicki
• Nicolle
• Nichelle

Nicolas against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Nicolas vs Nicholas
• Nicolas vs Nicole
• Nicolas vs Nichole
• Nicolas vs Nick
• Nicolas vs Nickolas
• Nicolas vs Nico

Compare Nicolas with a name of your own