Nikolaĭ
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Nikolaĭ is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 14th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From Russian Никола́й (Nikoláj). Cognate to English Nicholas, and to Finnish Niilo.
- EEEstonia≈1 in 984(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 40K
- BGBulgaria1 in 75as Николай
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 Nikolaĭ 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.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- #47 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 282 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 984 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,700,000 named Николай, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Николай in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, UA Ukraine and 3 more, Nikolay in US United States and Nikolaj in MD Moldova.
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)
From Russian Никола́й (Nikoláj). Cognate to English Nicholas, and to Finnish Niilo.
Sources 4
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wiktionary
- Nordic Names
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nikolaĭ 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #14 | ≈1,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 85 | #2 | Николай | 259 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | #10 | ≈99,000 est. | ≈1 in 193 | 15K | Николай | 66 |
| BG Bulgaria | #4 | 92,940as Николай | 1 in 75 | 93K | Николай | 193 |
| UA Ukraine | #85 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 545 | — | Николай | 98 |
| BY Belarus | #18 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 236 | 27 | Николай | 54 |
| MD Moldova | #83 | 32,823as Nicolai | 1 in 103 | 33K | Nikolaj | 30 |
| US United States | — | 8,218 | 1 in 40K | 8.2K | Nikolay | 282 |
| EE Estonia | #4 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 984 | 3.5K | Николай | 55 |
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: Bureau of National Statistics — birth registrations; NSI — most common given names (population); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); e-services.md — living population register; Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population Register). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Nikolaĭ mean, and where does it come from?
- From Russian Никола́й (Nikoláj). Cognate to English Nicholas, and to Finnish Niilo. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Dictionary of American Family Names and 2 other sources.
- Is Nikolaĭ a male or female name?
- Nikolaĭ is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Nikolaĭ have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.7 million people named Николай in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Nikolaĭ?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,218 people named Nikolaĭ in 2020, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Nikolaĭ compared with other names?
- In Russia, Nikolaĭ is the 14th most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nikolaĭ?
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/nikola%C4%ADThe 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, “Nikolaĭ” — the 14th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.