Nikel
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/nɪkəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nikel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- RURussia≈1 in 273Kas Никель(inferred from the name graph)
- PLPoland1 in 38K
- CZCzechia1 in 58K
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 Nikel 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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 101 (measured from records)
- 1 in 38K (inferred from the name graph)
8,292 named Nickel, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Никель in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan and Nickel in US United States.
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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nikel 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 | 8,292as Nickel | 1 in 40K | 8.3K | Nickel | 10 |
| BR Brazil | 1,113as Nickel | 1 in 190K | 1.1K | — | — |
| PL Poland | 1,003 | 1 in 38K | 520 | Nikel | 37 |
| RU Russia | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 273K | — | Никель | 101 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 98K | 51 | Никель | 23 |
| CZ Czechia | 184 | 1 in 58K | 185 | Nikel | 23 |
| CH Switzerland | 148as Nickel | 1 in 57K | 148 | — | 1 |
| SK Slovakia | 93 | 1 in 59K | 93 | Nikel | 17 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 2021 National Population Census — popular surnames of Russians, by region of residence; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Nikel is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Malay, nickel (chemical element)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In csb, nickel (element)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Basque, Níquel. Bildu dituzten urre-zillarrak, / nikelak eta kobriak . MendaroTx 128. Nikelezko dirutan, amar milloe laurleko erriaren esku-artean ipintzea. EAEg 17-3-1937, 1297.
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
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)
- Johannes Nikelb. 1863PLGerman biblical scholar (1863-1924)
- Lea Nikelb. 1918ILIsraeli artist (1918-2005)
- Hannes Nikelb. 1931DEGerman film editor (1931-2001)
- Rolf Nikelb. 1954DEGerman diplomat
- Volker Nikelb. 1959DEGerman artist
- Pablo I NikelDKresearcher
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 37 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 520 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 520 | #6,294 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 483 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 483 | #6,645 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 233 | #32,417 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 185 | #5,828 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 184 | #9,209 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 182 | #93,427 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 178 | #101,247 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 174 | #108,494 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 93 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 7 | #79,838 |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- How do you pronounce Nikel?
- A machine transcription gives /nɪkəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nikel 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 is Nikel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nikel is densest in Poland — about 1 in 38 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nikel?
- In Poland, the national register counted 1,003 people named Nikel in 2026, about 1 in 38 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Nikel?
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/nikelThe 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, “Nikel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.