Nikolaj
given name · Latin script
Meaning: a male given name, variant of Nicolai
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Nikolaj is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 14th most common given name.
- BGBulgaria1 in 75as Николай(measured from records)
- RURussia≈1 in 85as Николай
- KZKazakhstan≈1 in 193as Николай
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 Nikolaj 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.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- #47 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 282 (measured from records)
- 1 in 593 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,700,000 named Николай, est.
of 15M given names
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 Николай in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, UA Ukraine and 2 more.
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)
a male given name, variant of Nicolai
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nikolaj 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #14 | ≈1,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 85 | #2 | Николай | 259 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | #10 | ≈99,000 est. | ≈1 in 193 | 15K | Николай | 66 |
| BG Bulgaria | #4 | 92,940as Николай | 1 in 75 | 93K | Николай | 193 |
| UA Ukraine | #85 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 545 | — | Николай | 98 |
| BY Belarus | #18 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 236 | 27 | Николай | 54 |
| MD Moldova | #83 | 32,823as Nicolai | 1 in 103 | 33K | Nikolaj | 30 |
| DK Denmark | — | 9,898 | 1 in 593 | 9.9K | — | 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: Bureau of National Statistics — birth registrations; NSI — most common given names (population); Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); e-services.md — living population register; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Nikolaj 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 Swedish, Nikolaj är en rysk form av → Nikolaus medan Nikolai egentligen är en latinsk genitivform av samma namn. Den senare formen, hämtad från bl.a. namn på kyrkor (S:t Nikolai), har varit viktigare i svenskt namnbruk. Namnet användes en del på 1800-talet i Sverige men har i modern tid varit mer populärt i Norge och Danmark.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Slovenian, a male given name, equivalent to English Nicholas
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Nikolay Karamzinb. 1766RUnot in their usual nameRussian writer, poet, critic
- Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevskyb. 1792RUnot in their usual nameRussian mathematician (1792–1856)
- Nicholas I of Russiab. 1796RUnot in their usual nameThe 11th Emperor of Russia, 1825–1855 (lived 1796-1855)
- Nikolai Gogolb. 1809UAnot in their usual nameRussian writer of Ukrainian origin (1809–1852)
- Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasovb. 1821UAnot in their usual nameRussian poet, writer, critic, editor and publisher (1821–1878)
- Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russiab. 1856RUnot in their usual nameRussian general (1856-1929); son of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich the Elder and Duchess Alexandra of Oldenburg
- Nicholas II of Russiab. 1868RUnot in their usual name14th and last Emperor of Russia (1894–1917)
- Nicolas Roerichb. 1874RUnot in their usual nameRussian painter, writer, archaeologist and philosopher (1874–1947)
- Korney Chukovskyb. 1882RUnot in their usual nameRussian children's poet (1882–1969)
- Nikolaj Ivanovič Vavilovb. 1887RURussian (Soviet) agronomist, botanist and geneticist (1887-1943)
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 60 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 9.9K | #71 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2014 | 160 | #44 |
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 3 | #5,005 |
Reference works 5
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Nikolaj mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name, variant of Nicolai Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Nikolaj a male or female name?
- Nikolaj 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.
- What are other forms of the name Nikolaj?
- In the etymology graph, Nicolas, Nicholas and Nick are forms of the same name in other languages; Nik and Niels are recorded short or pet forms.
- In which country does Nikolaj have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.7 million people named Николай in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Nikolaj most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nikolaj is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 593 people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nikolaj?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 9,898 people named Nikolaj, about 1 in 593 residents.
- How common is Nikolaj compared with other names?
- In Russia, Nikolaj is the 14th most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nikolaj?
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/nikolajThe 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, “Nikolaj” — the 14th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.