Nickel
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from German and Dutch Nickel, a pet-form of Nick, short for Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Nickel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 40K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 43M
- CHSwitzerland1 in 57K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 205 (measured from records)
- 1 in 40K (inferred from the name graph)
8,292 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from German and Dutch Nickel, a pet-form of Nick, short for Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nickel is read(measured from records)
Nickel 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.
- English63%
from German and Dutch Nickel, a pet-form of Nick, short for Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German24%
from Nikolaus, Greek 'victory of the people'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Surname family showing syncope of unstressed -el > -l; bearer count 9044.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
from Nicolaus; also a reduced form related to Nückel
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
nickel (a silvery elemental metal with an atomic number of 28 and symbol Ni).
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Nickel 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 | — | 8,292 | 1 in 40K | 8.3K | Nickel | 205 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,113 | 1 in 190K | 1.1K | — | 1 |
| PL Poland | — | 629 | 1 in 61K | 330 | Nickel | 1 |
| AR Argentina | — | 171 | 1 in 266K | 171 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 148 | 1 in 57K | 148 | Nickel | 23 |
| SE Sweden | — | 88 | 1 in 116K | 88 | Nickel | 8 |
| FI Finland | — | 49 | 1 in 114K | 49 | — | 3 |
| DE Germany | #303 | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 43M | listed | Nickel | 185 |
8,292 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: the dfa-band-1 register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Nickel 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.
from a pet form of Nick, a short form of the personal name Nikolaus (see 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)
- Ernest Henry Nickelb. 1925CAAustralian-Canadian mineralogist, CSIRO-Exploration & Mining
- Uta Nickelb. 1941DEGerman politician
- Günther Nickelb. 1946DEOlympic athlete
- Bernd Nickelb. 1949DEGerman footballer
- Harald Nickelb. 1953DEGerman footballer (1953-2019)
- Rafael Nickelb. 1958DEGerman fencer
- Jochen Nickelb. 1959DEGerman actor
- Christian Nickelb. 1969DEGerman actor
- Wiley Nickelb. 1975USAmerican politician & attorney (born 1975)
- Neele Marie Nickelb. 2000DEGerman actress
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 47 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.3K | #4,291 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.2K | #3,991 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.7K | #4,479 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #8,405 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 330 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 330 | #10,072 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 299 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 299 | #10,934 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 171 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 148 | #8,037 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 88 | #8,011 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 49 | #23,182 |
Reference works 8
- 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 given-name tokens
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Nickel mean, and where does it come from?
- from German and Dutch Nickel, a pet-form of Nick, short for Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Nickel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.3 thousand people named Nickel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nickel.
- Where is Nickel most common?
- Nickel is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 40 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Nickel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,292 people named Nickel in 2010, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Nickel compared with other names?
- In Germany, Nickel is the 303rd most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nickel?
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/nickelThe 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, “Nickel” — the 303rd most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.