Nicolau
surname · Latin script
Meaning: patronymic from the personal name Nicolai (see Nicholas)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries · latest register: SSA, 2023
/nikolaw/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nicolau is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Brazil.
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)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 Nicolai (see Nicholas).
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Nicolau counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 8.2K | — |
| ES Spain | — | 3.7K | — |
| AR Argentina | — | 1K | — |
| US United States | — | 514 | — |
| FR France | — | 129 | — |
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: IBGE — Nomes (census name API); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)Nicolau is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from the personal name Nicolau (see Nicholas).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Portuguese, a male given name, equivalent to English Nicholas
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)- Valeriano Weylerb. 1838ESnot in their usual nameSpanish general (1838-1930)
- Diego de los Ríos y Nicolaub. 1850ESSpanish Governor-General of the Philippines
- Antoni Nicolaub. 1858ESCatalan conductor and composer (1858–1933)
- Christian Nicolaub. 1947FROlympic athlete
- Asunción Valdésb. 1950ESnot in their usual nameSpanish journalist
- João Nicolaub. 1975PTPortuguese film director
- Diego Nicolaub. 1982BRSamba-Enredo interpreter and Composer
- Enric Masb. 1995ESnot in their usual nameSpanish cyclist
- Joel Nicolaub. 1997ESSpanish cyclist
- Bb trickzb. 2000ESnot in their usual nameSpanish rapper and singer
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)49 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 8.2K | #2,446 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 8.2K | #862 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 5.9K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 5.9K | #2,430 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2020 | 5.9K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2010 | 5.8K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2000 | 5.6K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1990 | 5.2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1980 | 4.7K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1970 | 4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1960 | 2.9K | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 599 | #4,039 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Nicolau mean, and where does it come from?
- patronymic from the personal name Nicolai (see Nicholas). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Nicolau?
- In the etymology graph, Nichol, Mikula and Kolos are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Nicolau?
- A machine transcription gives /nikolaw/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
- In which country does Nicolau have the most bearers?
- Nicolau is most frequently recorded in Brazil.
What do you want to know about Nicolau?
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/nicolauThe 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, “Nicolau”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.