Niels
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in French: Dutch/Scandinavian form of Nicholas, from Greek 'victory of the people'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/niɛls/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Niels is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 65th most common given name.
- DKDenmark1 in 190(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 609
- SESweden1 in 72as Nils
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 Niels 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.
- Sweden (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 277 (measured from records)
- 1 in 190 (inferred from the name graph)
141,270 named Nils
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Nils in SE Sweden, DE Germany, NO Norway.
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)
Dutch/Scandinavian form of Nicholas, from Greek 'victory of the people'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
How Niels is read(measured from records)
Niels is one spelling over 5 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.
- Danish44%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Niels in Danish.
- Dutch17%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Niels in Dutch.
- German14%
106 Träger; Patronym aus Kurzform von Cornelius, mit Wegfall der ersten Silbe und Assimilation e > i.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
- English10%
element
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- French5.9%
Dutch/Scandinavian form of Nicholas, from Greek 'victory of the people'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Forme danoise de Niel; origine irlandaise, « champion ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
Niels 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | #65 | 141,270as Nils | 1 in 72 | 141K | Nils | 163 |
| DE Germany | #252 | ≈60,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Nils | 255 |
| DK Denmark | #15 | 30,836 | 1 in 190 | 31K | Niels | 191 |
| NL Netherlands | #290 | 28,392 | 1 in 609 | 28K | Niels | 115 |
| NO Norway | #49 | 11,733as Nils | 1 in 466 | 29K | Nils | 120 |
141,270 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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: Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); 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); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)
Niels 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 Swedish, Niels är en dansk utveckling av → Nikolaus. En känd namnbärare är den danske atomfysikern Niels Bohr (1885–1962).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Nielsb. 1063DEKing of Denmark
- Nicolas Stenob. 1638DKnot in their usual namePioneer in anatomy and geology, bishop (1638–1686)
- Niels Henrik Abelb. 1802NONorwegian mathematician (1802–1829)
- Niels Gadeb. 1817DKDanish composer, conductor, violinist, organist and teacher (1817–1890)
- Niels Neergaardb. 1854DKDanish politician (1854-1936)
- Niels Ryberg Finsenb. 1860DKFaroese physician and scientist of Icelandic descent
- Niels Bohrb. 1885DKDanish physicist (1885–1962)
- Poul Nielsenb. 1891DKnot in their usual nameDanish footballer (1891-1962)
- Aage Niels Bohrb. 1922DKDanish physicist (1922–2009)
- Niels Arestrupb. 1949FRFrench actor, film director and screenwriter (1949–2024)
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)
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 72 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 31K | #15 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 28K | #80 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 26K | #107 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 1.6K | #1,239 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1.2K | #1,535 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 618 | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 523 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 1998 | 137 | #50 |
| NL Netherlands | SVB Kindernamen — annual newborn name frequency (Wayback-recovered) | 2017 | 111 | #156 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 19 | #15,207 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2023 | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
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 Niels mean, and where does it come from?
- Dutch/Scandinavian form of Nicholas, from Greek 'victory of the people'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Niels a male or female name?
- Niels 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.
- How do you pronounce Niels?
- A machine transcription gives /niɛls/ (IPA) for Danish.
- What are other forms of the name Niels?
- In the etymology graph, Nick, Klaus and Nico are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Cornelius and Nikolaj.
- In which country does Niels have the most bearers?
- In Sweden, the national register counted about 141 thousand people named Nils, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Niels most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Niels is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 190 people — even though Sweden holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Niels?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 30,836 people named Niels, about 1 in 190 residents.
- How common is Niels compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Niels is the 65th most common given name of 45,482 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Niels?
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/nielsThe 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, “Niels” — the 65th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.