Nikolai
About 11,027 American babies have been named Nikolai since 1960, most of them around 2016. In 2025 it ranked 605th. About 11,000 Nikolais are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 10.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Nikolai
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 11,027
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 10
- Peak year
- 2016
- Best rank
- 480th
- Rank in 2025
- 605th
- First recorded
- 1960
How old the living Nikolais are
born that year still alive today
Of the 11,027 babies given the name since 1960, about 11,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 8,600 of them are children and 5 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2015 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.
Notable Nikolais
- Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852)Russian writer of Ukrainian origin
- Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1792–1856)Russian mathematician
- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)Russian composer
- Nikolai Noskov (born 1956)Soviet and Russian singer and song writer
- Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938)Russian revolutionary and politician
- Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948)Russian philosopher
- Nikolai Ostrovsky (1904–1936)Ukrainian-Russian writer
- Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943)Russian (Soviet) agronomist, botanist and geneticist
People named Nikolai with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Nikolai is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Nikolai is most concentrated in Nevada (3.3×), Arizona (2.4×), Florida (2.3×), Alaska (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2016
The most popular boys’ names the year Nikolai peaked:
Nikolai elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Nikolai | 4,581 | 41st |
| England and Wales boys | Nikolai | 515 | 894th |
| Switzerland boys | Nikolai +1 spelling | 187 | 444th |
| France boys | Nikolai +1 spelling | 170 | 1,916th |
| Poland boys | Nikolai | 57 birth registrations | 404th |
| Ireland boys | Nikolai | 17 | 439th |
| Scotland boys | Nikolai | 8 | 375th |
| Belgium boys | Nikolai | 5 | 1,377th |
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.
Nikolai: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Nikolai | 148 | 0.012% | 310th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Nikolaï | 21 | 0.005% | 374th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Nikolai | 17 | 0.004% | 496th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Nikolai | 1 | 0.002% | 193rd |
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, Nikolai is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.02% of children were given it – 65 of them.
Nikolai: rank by region
In 2024, Nikolai was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Małopolskie | Nikolai | 241 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – 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.
Nikolai by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 49 | 265th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Nikolai 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Nikolai | 584 | 5,027 |
| Finland girls | Nikolai | — | 10 |
Among boys in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 5,027 who carry it, 584 go by it.
A count of people on a register – 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 Nikolai lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 646 men called Nikolai 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
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Nikolai | 127 | 0.126 | 656 |
| Girona | Nikolai | 27 | 0.065 | 1,014 |
| Valencia/València | Nikolai | 79 | 0.058 | 1,041 |
| Málaga | Nikolai | 50 | 0.057 | 973 |
| Barcelona | Nikolai | 138 | 0.047 | 1,171 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Nikolai | 22 | 0.041 | 1,876 |
Listed in 21 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 31 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Nikolai 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.