Nicolai

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Danish: a male given name from Latin Nīcolāī (genitive) or Russian Никола́й (Nikoláj), of traditionally popular usage, equivalent to English Nicholas; the use of the genitive in Latin is common in church name

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Nicolai is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Moldova than in any other country. In Denmark it is the 97th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • DKDenmark1 in 605(measured from records)
  • NONorway1 in 1.8K
  • MDMoldova1 in 103

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Moldova (measured from records)

32,823 people

Sources
164 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 103 (inferred from the name graph)

Moldova

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Patronymic from Latin genitive Nicolai; demonstrates genitive -i / -y variation.

Sources 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

How Nicolai is read(measured from records)

Nicolai is one spelling over 6 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.

  • Danish27%

    a male given name from Latin Nīcolāī (genitive) or Russian Никола́й (Nikoláj), of traditionally popular usage, equivalent to English Nicholas; the use of the genitive in Latin is common in church names

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

  • German23%

    Patronymic from Latin genitive Nicolai; demonstrates genitive -i / -y variation.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

    Patronym im lat. Genitiv auf -i; Belegzahl 2465. Morphologisch: Latinisierung des Rufnamens mit Genitivendung -i.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

    Patronymisch aus dem lat. Genitiv zu Nikolaus/Nicolaus; -i-Form, daneben -lay/-s. Bearer: 2+0.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

  • English12%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Nicolai in English.

  • Norwegian7.5%

    a male given name derived from Nicolaus, variant of Nikolai

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

  • Hebrew7.0%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Nicolai in Hebrew.

  • Spanish6.4%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Nicolai in Spanish.

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)

Nicolai 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 Nicolai is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MD Moldova#17932,8231 in 10333KNicolai9
DK Denmark#979,7001 in 6059.7KNicolai164
NO Norway#4013,0741 in 1.8K11KNicolai84
RO Romania—≈2,700 est.≈1 in 7.8K—Nicolai10
US United States—1,8191 in 183K2KNicolai100
SE Sweden—7551 in 14K755Nicolai27

32,823 people counted by e-services.md — living population register. 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: e-services.md — living population register; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)

Nicolai is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • German given name8 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: German, English, Dutch

    Also written Nicolaï

  • Romanian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Moldova, Romania, United States, Italy

    Also written Nicolaï, Nicôlai

  • Spanish given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Philippines, Peru, United States

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Nicolaï, Nicolaí, Nicolái, Nicolài, Nicólaí

  • Italian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, Moldova, United States, Romania

    Also written Nicolaï, Nïçolaï, Nicôlai

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Nicolai͏̈, Nicolaï

  • Indonesian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Philippines, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Nicolaï

  • a separate given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Russia, Sweden

    Also written Nicolaï, Nicôlai

51 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)

Nicolai 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 Italian, Latinate (humanistic) patronymic from Nicholas.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)

1700180019002000Nicolai Wergeland, b. 1780Thorvald Nicolai Thiele, b. 1838Nicolai Hartmann, b. 1882Nikolay Moiseyev, b. 1902Gottfried Lessing, b. 1914Nicolai Cleve Broch, b. 1975Nicolai Tegeler, b. 1978Nicolai Jørgensen, b. 1991Nicolai Boilesen, b. 1992Nicolai Brock-Madsen, b. 1993

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 80 sources across 34 countries.

Official registers attesting Nicolai
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
MD Moldovae-services.md — living population register—33K#32
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—11K#377
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—9.7K#73
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20253.1K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.8K#8,087
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present)2000886#9
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—755#2,071
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020328—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202551—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202034#8,087
NO NorwaySSB — Navn (1880–present)202529—

Reference works 9

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

Where does the name Nicolai come from?
Patronymic from Latin genitive Nicolai; demonstrates genitive -i / -y variation. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen.
What are other forms of the name Nicolai?
In the etymology graph, Nicolas, Nicholas and Nick are forms of the same name in other languages.
What does the name Nicolai mean?
In Danish, a male given name from Latin Nīcolāī (genitive) or Russian Никола́й (Nikoláj), of traditionally popular usage, equivalent to English Nicholas; the use of the genitive in Latin is common in church name…
Is Nicolai a male or female name?
Nicolai 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 Nicolai have the most bearers?
In Moldova, the national register counted about 33 thousand people named Nicolai, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nicolai.
Where is Nicolai most common?
Nicolai is densest in Moldova, where the national register counts about 1 in 103 people carrying it.
How common is the name Nicolai?
In Moldova, the national register counted 32,823 people named Nicolai, about 1 in 103 residents.
How common is Nicolai compared with other names?
In Moldova, Nicolai is the 179th most common given name of 1,433 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Nicolai?

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

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, “Nicolai” — the 179th most common given name in Moldova. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Nicolai parses inside a full name →