Nichols
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Americanized form of any of various like-sounding Jewish names
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈnɪkəɫz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nichols is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 2.2K
- USUnited States1 in 2.3K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #652 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 546 (measured from records)
- 1 in 596 (inferred from the name graph)
≈870,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Americanized form of any of various like-sounding Jewish names.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nichols 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈870,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Nichols | 18 |
| US United States | #167 | 145,584 | 1 in 2.3K | 146K | Nichols | 546 |
| GB United Kingdom | #271 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 12K | Nichols | 235 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Nichols | 20 |
| IT Italy | #272 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | 1 | Nichols | 32 |
| IE Ireland | #209 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Nichols | 34 |
| IS Iceland | #264 | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Nichols | 8 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 170 | 1 in 596 | 170 | — | 6 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025). 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)
Nichols 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 English, A surname transferred from the given name.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, son of Nichol
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- George Nicholsb. 1864USAmerican actor and film director (1864-1927)
- Dudley Nicholsb. 1895USAmerican screenwriter (1895-1960)
- Barbara Nicholsb. 1928USAmerican actress (1928-1976)
- Mike Nicholsb. 1931USAmerican director and comedian (1931–2014)
- Nichelle Nicholsb. 1932USAmerican actress (1932–2022)
- Lance E. Nicholsb. 1955USAmerican actor
- Taylor Nicholsb. 1959USAmerican actor
- Marisol Nicholsb. 1973USAmerican actress
- Rachel Nicholsb. 1980USAmerican actress and model (born 1980)
- Austin Nicholsb. 1980USAmerican actor and director (born 1980)
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)
Attested in 41 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 146K | #189 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 142K | #174 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 137K | #206 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 12K | #604 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 170 | #108 |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Nichols mean, and where does it come from?
- Americanized form of any of various like-sounding Jewish names. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Nichols?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈnɪkəɫz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nichols have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 870 thousand people named Nichols in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nichols.
- Where is Nichols most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nichols is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 596 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nichols?
- In the United States, the national register counted 145,584 people named Nichols in 2010, about 1 in 2.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Nichols compared with other names?
- In the United States, Nichols is the 167th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nichols?
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/nicholsThe 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, “Nichols” — the 167th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.