boys:
1.8k births since 1962
#2964 (35th percentile)
overall:
1.8k births since 1962
#5991 (23rd percentile)
The name Nicolai is the #5,991 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 1,760 recorded births since 1962. This represents the 22.6% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 22.6% of all names). For boys, it ranks #2,964 (35.3% percentile) for all time with 1,760 births since 1962.
Nicolai first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1962 (first recorded for boys in 1962). Birth data for Nicolai is available in 52 out of the 62 years between 1962 and 2023. 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.
For boys, Nicolai reached its peak popularity in 2015, achieving the 8.1% percentile (ranked #832) with 38 births per million. The name was most common in 2015, with 38 births per million (ranked 8.1% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2021, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Nicolai ranks #863 for boys (5.3% percentile) with 29 births per million, which is 75.9% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Nicolai".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Nikolai. View all variations of Nikolai.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Nicolai", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 15 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Nikolai" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Nikolai..
Our model has identified 10 different pronunciations for the name Nicolai. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 25.0% confident that Nicolai is pronounced as NIH-kuh-lai, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is NIH-kuh-LAI, at 18.8% 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 Nicolai? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Nicolai. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Nicolai, 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 AY0) 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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