girls:
5k births since 1920
#2376 (58th percentile)
boys:
2.9k births since 1908
#2319 (49th percentile)
overall:
8k births since 1908
#3024 (61st percentile)
The name Nicola is the #3,024 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 7,993 recorded births since 1908. This represents the 60.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 60.9% of all names). For girls, it ranks #2,376 (58.4% percentile) for all time with 5,050 births since 1920. For boys, it ranks #2,319 (49.4% percentile) for all time with 2,943 births since 1908.
Nicola first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1908 (1908 for boys and 1920 for girls). Birth data for Nicola is available in 115 out of the 116 years between 1908 and 2023 (113 years for boys and 88 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Nicola has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (63.2% of all recorded births). In 2023, 39.6% of babies named Nicola were girls.
For girls, Nicola reached its peak popularity in 1972, achieving the 23.4% percentile (ranked #569) with 113 births per million. The name was most common in 1972, with 113 births per million (ranked 23.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2021, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Nicola ranks #933 for girls (1.5% percentile) with 11 births per million, which is 9.6% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Nicola reached its peak popularity in 1972, achieving the 7.3% percentile (ranked #613) with 32 births per million. The name was most common in 1912, with 38 births per million (ranked 3.1% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2014, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Nicola ranks #887 for boys (2.6% percentile) with 16 births per million, which is 42.1% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Nicola".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Nicola.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Nicola", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Nicola.
Our model has identified 7 different pronunciations for the name Nicola. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 39.1% confident that Nicola is pronounced as NIH-kuh-luh, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is nih-KOH-luh, at 19.6% confidence, with 3 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Nicola? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Nicola. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Nicola, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like N IH1 K AH0 L AH0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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