← Back to The Colonial Americas
Boy · Greek
Nikola
Say it: NEE-koh-lah
Meaning
From Greek nike 'victory' and laos 'people'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
From the hugely popular Saint Nicholas of Myra, it is among the most common Serbian and Croatian boys' names.
Its wave through time
Popular now
In the United States
- 3,451 babies given this name since 1948
- At its height in 2020, about 1 in 11,300 boys
- 159 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- The Renaissance1400 to 1600
- The Age of Revolutions1750 to 1837
- Victorian and Belle Époque1837 to 1914
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Никола
| Russian | Nikolai |
|---|---|
| Ukrainian | Mykola |
| Polish | Mikołaj |
| Czech | Mikuláš |
| Slovak | Mikuláš |
| Bulgarian | Nikola |
| Greek | Nikolaos |
Famous bearers
- Nikola Tesla, inventor
- Nikola Šubić Zrinski, Croatian ban
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- Calendars of saints and name days
- National birth statistics of European countries source
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.