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The NICHOLAS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 26,628 1205 0.01 99
United States (1880 census) 5,299 1148 0.011 106
Change since 1880 +21329 -57 -0.001 -7
Other Countries
Australia 2,566 617 0.016 157
United Kingdom 8,741 691 0.019 190
Top States for NICHOLAS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 2,327 1495 0.007 69
New York 2,037 900 0.011 107
Florida 1,761 1243 0.011 110
Pennsylvania 1,610 875 0.013 131
Texas 1,491 1740 0.007 72
Top States for NICHOLAS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 570 504 0.032 315
Louisiana 1,059 647 0.024 237
Alaska 132 588 0.021 211
Maine 251 1074 0.020 197
Alabama 617 1256 0.014 139

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called NICHOLAS live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called NICHOLAS represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called NICHOLAS in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a NICHOLAS by picking someone at random in West Virginia than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of NICHOLAS

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the NICHOLAS surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the NICHOLAS surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of NICHOLAS in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 719 2.7
Mixed Race 570 2.14
Native American/Alaskan 370 1.39
Asian/Pacific 298 1.12
White (Caucasian) 20,386 76.56
Black/African American 4,287 16.1

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the NICHOLAS surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of NICHOLAS in historical publications

NICHOLAS. The Christian name. Hence

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to NICHOLAS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as NICHOLAS.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for NICHOLAS

The following words are slight variants of NICHOLAS that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.