How popular is the baby name Nicholas in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Nicholas.
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Back in 1997, the western U.S. state of Colorado welcomed 56,505 babies.
What were the most popular names among these babies? Hannah and Jacob, according to data from the Health Statistics Section of Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment.
The state also revealed the top names within each of its three largest racial/ethnic groups, which it defined as “White/non-Hispanic,” “White/Hispanic,” and “Black.”
Number of babies
Top girl name
Top boy name
White/non-Hispanic
38,729 (69%)
Hannah
Jacob
White/Hispanic
12,951 (23%)
Jessica
Jose
Black
2,582 (5%)
Jasmine
Isaiah
Here are Colorado’s top 50 girl names (overall) and top 50 boy names (overall) of 1997:
Girl names
Hannah
Emily
Jessica
Sarah
Madison
Samantha
Taylor
Alexandra
Ashley
Megan
Elizabeth
Rachel
Alyssa
Alexis
Lauren
Emma
Kayla
Morgan
Amanda
Brianna
Jennifer
Jordan
Abigail
Victoria
Nicole
Brittany
Rebecca
Danielle
Katherine
Sierra
Anna
Mariah
Olivia
Amber
Sydney
Stephanie
Jasmine
Brooke
Haley
Maria
Kaitlyn
Gabrielle
Savannah
Allison
Marissa
Bailey
Courtney
Sara
Erin
Mackenzie
Boy names
Jacob
Michael
Matthew
Joshua
Austin
Tyler
Andrew
Christopher
Nicholas
Brandon
Daniel
Ryan
Joseph
Zachary
David
Alexander
Anthony
John
James
Benjamin
Kyle
Samuel
William
Justin
Jonathan
Dylan
Christian
Jordan
Cody
Robert
Nathan
Aaron
Thomas
Eric
Connor
Cameron
Jose
Noah
Adam
Logan
Isaiah
Sean
Gabriel
Caleb
Jack
Cole
Kevin
Trevor
Ethan
Ian
How do these rankings stack up against the U.S. Social Security Administration’s 1997 rankings for Colorado?
The boy names look similar, but there are two significant discrepancies among the girl names: Alexandra ranked 11 spots lower (19th vs. 8th) and Gabrielle ranked 33 spots lower (75th vs. 42nd) on the federal government’s list.
Other names bestowed in Colorado in 1997 included “Elway, Jamaica, and Mars for baby boys, and October, November, Paradise, and Rejoice for baby girls.”
Elway was no doubt inspired by John Elway, the longtime Denver Broncos quarterback who was about to lead the team to its first Super Bowl victory (in January of 1998).
Speaking of Colorado baby names with historical significance…here are posts about Denver (b. 1859), Colorado (b. 1859), Salida (b. 1881), and Silver Dollar (b. 1889).
On September 14, 1901, U.S. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt ascended to the presidency following the assassination of William McKinley.
Days later, he moved into the White House with his wife, Edith, and their six children: Alice, Theodore III, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin.
Seventeen-year-old Alice — the only child born to Roosevelt’s late first wife — was intelligent and photogenic, but also spoiled and rebellious. Dubbed “Princess Alice” by the press, she was in the headlines nearly as often as her father was during his presidency. Her antics included smoking cigarettes in public, driving a car without a chaperone, sneaking alcohol into dry parties, attending (and betting on) horse races, and carrying a pet garter snake (named Emily Spinach) in her purse.
Her father was quoted as saying, “I can be President of the United States, or I can attend to Alice. I can’t do both!”
Three events drew particular attention to Alice:
Her debutante ball, which was held in the White House on January 3, 1902.
Her travels through Asia, from July to October, 1905. (She accompanied Secretary of War William Howard Taft on a diplomatic trip that featured stops in in Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, and Korea.)
Her wedding to Ohio Congressman Nicholas Longworth, which was held in the White House on February 17, 1906.
Alice Roosevelt (in 1906)
Among the things named in honor of Alice were a color (Alice Blue), several songs (e.g., “Alice Roosevelt March“), and hundreds of babies:
Hastings, Catherine M. “Edith Kermit Roosevelt: First Lady, First Mommy.” Inventing a Voice: The Rhetoric of American First Ladies of the Twentieth Century, edited by Molly Meijer Wertheimer, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 45-57.
Did you know that you can find old vital statistics reports for the City of Philadelphia on the city’s website? And that most of these reports include baby name rankings?
I don’t want you to have to comb through a bunch of PDFs to find Philly’s historical top-ten lists, though, so — just as with New York City and Austin — I gathered all of them into a single blog post.
I was able to track down eleven sets of rankings — six covering 2005 to 2010, five covering 2012 to 2016. Eight of them also happen to include total numbers of babies.
2016
The most popular baby names in Philadelphia in 2016.
Finally, because Philadelphia and New York City are relatively close to one another, I thought I’d compare/contrast the rankings above with the NYC rankings for the same years (2005 to 2016, excluding 2011).
Parents in both cities often liked the same names, but not always at the same time, or to the same degree. During the years that Kayla ranked #1 in Philly, for instance, it was already on the decline in NYC.
Here are all the names that reached the top 10 at least twice in one city, but zero times in the other city:
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