Nigel
Nigel reached its high-water mark in 1994 at number 477, and has been recorded 12,371 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 2,077th. About 12,000 Nigels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 28.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Nigel boys named Nigel
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 12,371
- Estimated living today
- 12,000
- Median age today
- 28
- Peak year
- 1994
- Best rank
- 477th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,077th
- First recorded
- 1915
- Girls / boys
- 85 / 12,286
How old the living Nigels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 12,371 babies given the name since 1915, about 12,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 2,600 of them are children and 150 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1997 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
English form of from nigellus (“slightly black”), diminutive of niger (“black”), used in the Middle Ages to Latinize Norman Néel and Old Irish Níall, from which the former is derived via Old Norse Njáll. Compare Neil.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Nigels
- Nigel Mansell (born 1953)British racing driver
- Nigel de Jong (born 1984)Dutch association football player
- Nigel Short (born 1965)English chess player and writer
- Nigel Hawthorne (1929–2001)British actor
- Nigel Reo-Coker (born 1984)English association football player
- Nigel Kennedy (born 1956)British-born violinist and violist
- Nigel Lawson (1932–2023)British peer and politician
- Nigel Martyn (born 1966)English footballer
People named Nigel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Nigel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Nigel is most concentrated in Georgia (2.6×), Maryland (2.3×), South Carolina (2.2×), New York (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1994
The most popular boys’ names the year Nigel peaked:
Nigel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand boys | Nigel | 4,435 | 27th |
| Ireland boys | Nigel | 1,935 | 67th |
| England and Wales boys | Nigel | 433 | 747th |
| Belgium boys | Nigel | 174 | 420th |
| Scotland boys | Nigel | 126 | 142nd |
| France boys | Nigel | 90 | 5,416th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Nigel | 14 | 220th |
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.
Nigel: rank by region
In 2010, Nigel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Nigel | 871 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Nigel 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Nigel | 2,306 | 2,824 |
| Finland boys | Nigel | 7 | 16 |
| the Netherlands girls | Nigel | — | 6 |
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.
Related names
Nigel against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.