Nicola

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: from Greek Nikolaos, 'victory of the people'

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/nɪkələ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Nicola is a 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.

rarermore common
  • ITItaly≈1 in 318(inferred from the name graph)
  • GRGreece1 in 37as Νικόλαος
  • CYCyprus1 in 84as Νικολας

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 Nicola 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)

711,305 named Nicholas, 2020

#127 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

6 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
639 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 318 (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NicholasLatin(measured from records)
ΝικολαοςGreek(measured from records)
นิโคลัสThai(measured from records)
ნიკოლასGeorgian(measured from records)
니콜라스Hangul(measured from records)
НиколасCyrillic(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Nicolas in FR France, BR Brazil, UY Uruguay, Nicholas in US United States, IT Italy, Νικολαος in GR Greece and Nikolaos in CY Cyprus.

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 Greek Nikolaos, 'victory of the people'

Sources 1

  • Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.

How Nicola is read(measured from records)

Nicola is one spelling over 2 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.

  • English66%

    from Greek Nikolaos, 'victory of the people'

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

    A female given name from Ancient Greek.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Italian15%

    from the male personal name Nicola, from Greek Nikolaos (see Nicholas). This was a very common Italian name in the Middle Ages.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    a male given name, equivalent to English Nicholas

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Nicola 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.

Where Nicola is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#108711,305as Nicholas1 in 468710KNicholas639
FR France—≈380,000 est.≈1 in 179406KNicolas127
BR Brazil#316310,593as Nicolas1 in 682311KNicolas197
GR Greece#25290,329as Νικόλαος1 in 37570KΝικολαος210
IT Italy#202≈200,000 est.≈1 in 318681Nicholas190
CZ Czechia#73975,992as Nikola1 in 14176KNicola63
HR Croatia—32,304as Nikola1 in 13132K—2
CY Cyprus#2415,068as Νικολας1 in 8415KNikolaos75
UY Uruguay#1≈13,000 est.≈1 in 2631Nicolas121

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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Nicola is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Italian given name55 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Argentina, France

    Languages: Italian, Spanish, French

    Also written Nicolá, Nicolà, Nicolaus, Nícola, Nicolã

  • German given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United Kingdom, United States, Italy

    Also written Nicolà, Nicolá

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Nicolá, Nicolà, Nícola

  • Indonesian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Indonesia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Nícola, Ńicola

  • Romanian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United Kingdom, Italy, Romania, United States

    Also written Nìcola, Nicolá, Nicolà

79 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Nicola 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 Irish, Feminine form of Nicholas; now the established feminine form in Ireland.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In German, a female given name of 1960s and later usage, masculine equivalent Nikolaus, Nikolas, or Niklas

    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)

12001400160018002000Nicola Pisano, b. 1225Nicola Porpora, b. 1686Umberto II, b. 1904Nicola Piovani, b. 1946Nicola Pecorini, b. 1957Nicola Sturgeon, b. 1970Nicola Rizzoli, b. 1971Nicola Adams, b. 1982Nicola Coughlan, b. 1987Nicola Peltz, b. 1995

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)

InformalHi Nicola,

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)

Attested in 106 sources across 49 countries.

Official registers attesting Nicola
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20208.7K#2,111
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20224.6K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—4.3K#2,904
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20204K#2,111
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—3.1K#4,531
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—2.6K#339
CZ Czechianaše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot—1.3K#381
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20241.1K#2,898
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2020800—
IT ItalyISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend)2024681#57
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—272#2,904

Reference works 10

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

Is Nicola a male or female name?
Nicola 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.
What does the name Nicola mean, and where does it come from?
from Greek Nikolaos, 'victory of the people' Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
What are other forms of the name Nicola?
In the etymology graph, Nikola, Nicoletta and Niccolò are forms of the same name in other languages; Nico is a recorded short or pet form.
How do you pronounce Nicola?
A machine transcription gives /nɪkələ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Nicola 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.
How common is the name Nicola?
In the United States, the national register counted 711,305 people named Nicholas in 2020, about 1 in 468 residents.
How common is Nicola compared with other names?
In the United States, Nicola is the 108th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Nicola?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nicola

The 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, “Nicola” — the 108th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Nicola parses inside a full name →