Nicholls
surname · Latin script
Meaning: patronymic from the personal name Nichol
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈnɪkəɫz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nicholls is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Uruguay it is the most common given name.
- GRGreece1 in 37as Νικόλαος(measured from records)
- CYCyprus1 in 84as Νικολας
- FRFrance≈1 in 179as Nicolas
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Nicholls itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #127 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 639 (measured from records)
- 1 in 37 (inferred from the name graph)
711,305 named Nicholas, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Greece, as Νικόλαος
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Nicolas in FR France, BR Brazil, UY Uruguay, Nicholas in US United States, IT Italy, Νικολαος in GR Greece and Nicola in CZ Czechia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
patronymic from the personal name Nichol.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nicholls counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #108 | 711,305as Nicholas | 1 in 468 | 710K | Nicholas | 639 |
| FR France | — | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 179 | 406K | Nicolas | 127 |
| BR Brazil | #316 | 310,593as Nicolas | 1 in 682 | 311K | Nicolas | 197 |
| GR Greece | #25 | 290,329as Νικόλαος | 1 in 37 | 570K | Νικολαος | 210 |
| IT Italy | #202 | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 318 | 681 | Nicholas | 190 |
| CZ Czechia | #739 | 75,992as Nikola | 1 in 141 | 76K | Nicola | 63 |
| HR Croatia | — | 32,304as Nikola | 1 in 131 | 32K | — | 2 |
| CY Cyprus | #24 | 15,068as Νικολας | 1 in 84 | 15K | Nikolaos | 75 |
| UY Uruguay | #1 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 263 | 1 | Nicolas | 121 |
711,305 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ELSTAT — population given names; According to a survey conducted by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), the most popular male and female names i; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Montevideo Open Data — Nombres por año y sexo (1940–2012); MVČR — living population register 2017; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); CYSTAT — Name frequency (2011 Population Census). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Nicholls is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A surname transferred from the given name.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Francis T. Nichollsb. 1834USConfederate Army general, lawyer, judge and American politician (1834-1912)
- Anthony Nichollsb. 1902GBEnglish actor (1902–1977)
- Allan F. Nichollsb. 1945CACanadian film actor
- Geoff Nichollsb. 1948GBBritish guitarist and keyboardist (1948–2017)
- Frankie Knucklesb. 1955USnot in their usual nameAmerican DJ and record producer (1955–2014)
- Phoebe Nichollsb. 1957GBEnglish actress
- David Nichollsb. 1966GBBritish writer
- Craig Nichollsb. 1977AUAustralian rock musician
- Paul Nichollsb. 1979GBBritish actor
- Melanie Nicholls-Kingb. 1999CACanadian actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 39 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.8K | #5,801 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.7K | #6,010 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.3K | #5,931 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 98 | #64,313 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 13 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 12 | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 10 | #82,065 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 10 | #18,403 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 3 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Nicholls mean, and where does it come from?
- patronymic from the personal name Nichol. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Nicholls?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈnɪkəɫz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nicholls have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 711 thousand people named Nicholas, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Nicholls most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Nicholls itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Greece's: the national register counts about 1 in 37 people named Νικόλαος.
- How common is the name Nicholls?
- In the United States, the national register counted 711,305 people named Nicholas in 2020, about 1 in 468 residents.
- How common is Nicholls compared with other names?
- In the United States, Nicholls is the 108th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nicholls?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nichollsThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Nicholls” — the 108th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.