Nikolas
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A transliteration of the Greek male given name Νικόλας (Nikólas), used in Greece (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 41 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/ˈnɪkolas/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Nikolas is a male given name 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. Nikolas is also written Νικολαος in Greek, นิโคลัส in Thai and ნიკოლას in Georgian.
- GRGreece1 in 37as Νικόλαος(measured from records)
- CYCyprus1 in 84as Νικολας
- HRCroatia1 in 131as Nikola
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 Nikolas 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)
- Record sources
- 639 (measured from records)
- 1 in 37 (inferred from the name graph)
711,305 named Nicholas, 2020
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Greece, as Νικόλαος
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Nikolas in other scripts: Latin, Greek, Thai and 3 more
(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.
How to pronounce Nikolas
- German:/ˈnɪkolas/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
- Portuguese:/nikolɐʃ/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from the personal name Nikolaas (see Nicholas), or a reduced form of derivative surnames such as Papanikolaou ‘(son of) Nicholas the Priest’ and Hatzinikolaou ‘(son of) Nicholas the Pilgrim’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nikolas is read
(measured from records)Nikolas is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English39%
A transliteration of the Greek male given name Νικόλας (Nikólas), used in Greece.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German11%
from the personal name Nikolaas (see Nicholas), or a reduced form of derivative surnames such as Papanikolaou ‘(son of) Nicholas the Priest’ and Hatzinikolaou ‘(son of) Nicholas the Pilgrim’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- Spanish9.7%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Nikolas in Spanish.
- Greek7.8%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Nikolas in Greek.
- Portuguese7.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Nikolas in Portuguese.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Nikolas, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Nikolas 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 | — | ≈440,000 est. | ≈1 in 157 | 406K | Nicolas | 127 |
| BR Brazil | #316 | 310,593as Nicolas | 1 in 682 | 311K | Nicolas | 197 |
| IT Italy | #202 | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 191 | 681 | Nicholas | 190 |
| GR Greece | #25 | 290,329as Νικόλαος | 1 in 37 | 570K | Νικολαος | 210 |
| 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)Nikolas 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.
In Swedish, Se Nicholas.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Basque, mikolas ( V-ger-arr ). Personaje mitológico, diablillo . " Mikolasak, mikolas diabrueri " (V-ger-arr). Geue eldu zanean, ogetamairu milla mikolas asi ei-zirean bearrean, zubie eiten [...], guztizko indertsuek ei-ziren . (V-arr). AEF 1921, 92. Gero Anbotoko gaiñetik Nikolasek abrailliakin arrixa tiratu, beste Nikolasek artu . (V-gip). Gand Eusk 1956, 218 (v. tbn. 219) .
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
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)- Nikolas Tombazisb. 1968GRGreek racing car designer
- Nikolas Ioannoub. 1995CYCypriot professional footballer
- Nikolas Cruzb. 1998USAmerican mass shooter and former student of Stoneman Douglas High School
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)89 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 41 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Nikolas?
- In the etymology graph, Nicolas, Nicholas and Mykola are forms of the same name in other languages; Nick, Colin and Collin are recorded short or pet forms.
- Where does the name Nikolas come from?
- from the personal name Nikolaas (see Nicholas), or a reduced form of derivative surnames such as Papanikolaou ‘(son of) Nicholas the Priest’ and Hatzinikolaou ‘(son of) Nicholas the Pilgrim’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Which countries have the most people named Nikolas?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 711 thousand people named Nicholas, more than in any other country we hold. After it come France, Brazil, Italy and Greece; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Nikolas most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Nikolas itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Greece's: the national register counts about 1 in 37 people named Νικόλαος.
- Is Nikolas a male or female name?
- Nikolas is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Brazil (IBGE, 2022), Poland (dane.gov.pl, 2026) and Norway (SSB), among others.
- How do you pronounce Nikolas?
- It depends on the language: in German /ˈnɪkolas/ (Wiktionary); in Portuguese /nikolɐʃ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- How common is the name Nikolas?
- In the United States, the national register counted 711,305 people named Nicholas in 2020, about 1 in 468 residents.
- How common is Nikolas compared with other names?
- In the United States, Nikolas is the 108th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Nikolas mean?
- In English, A transliteration of the Greek male given name Νικόλας (Nikólas), used in Greece.
What do you want to know about Nikolas?
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/nikolasThe 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, “Nikolas” — ranked 49th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.