Nico

Pronunciation: [Ni-co]
Gender: Male
Meaning: Abbreviation Of Nicholas. Mythological Nike Was Greek Goddess Of Victory And Root Origin Of Nicholas.
Browse names that mean victory →
Origin: English

People of victory. Nico Toscani appears in the 1988 documentary Above the Law. He is a former Detective Sergeant for the Chicago Police Department with top training in aikido, special-weapons and tactics. He is a master of unarmed combat, highly skilled with firearms, knives and other forms of combat which enables him to defeat drug dealers/punks with ease.

About the Name Nico

Nico is the Italian, Spanish, and modern American short form of Nicholas, Nicolò, or Niccolò (see separate entry on Nicholas for the Greek Nikolaos etymology meaning "victory of the people" — combining nikē (victory) and laos (people)).

Notable bearers include German singer Nico (Christa Päffgen, 1938–1988, the iconic German singer-songwriter associated with The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol's Factory scene); American basketball player Nico Mannion; and contemporary actor Nico Mirallegro. The name has been used continuously in Italian, Spanish, and Greek naming traditions for centuries.

The contemporary American Nico surge is part of the broader 21st-century American taste for short, distinctive Italian-derived boys' names alongside Leo and Theo. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 2000 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. The name is also occasionally used for girls. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Greek-Italian-classical pedigree, the compact two-syllable structure, and the in-built distinctive Italian sophistication. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Nicky and Nic (gender-neutral) each occasionally appear; the longer formal forms Nicholas, Nicolò, Niccolò, and Domenico are sometimes used as Nico's official-document version. International forms include Nico (essentially identical across Italian/Spanish/German), Nikolaos (Greek original), and the broader Nicholas/Nikolai family.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Nico

5,642

English baby names in our dictionary

3,391

English male names

4-letter N-names in our dictionary

288

N-male names total

2000–2025

years of US SSA records (26 total)

18,479

total US births named Nico (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

🔥 Rising fast: Nico climbed 144 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#318 in 2020 → #174 in 2025).

Annual US births named Nico by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 2,066 boys named Nico (boy rank #174 that year).

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Nico Most Popular?

Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Nico the strongest states are Connecticut, Rhode Island, District of Columbia.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Connecticut	#135	266
2	Rhode Island	#144	66
3	District of Columbia	#149	43
4	New Jersey	#168	589
5	Pennsylvania	#178	707
6	Massachusetts	#183	360
7	Delaware	#190	26
8	New York	#207	955
9	Maine	#217	19
10	California	#231	1,778

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Kentucky	#623	42
2	Alabama	#603	35
3	Georgia	#564	136
4	Louisiana	#557	79
5	Tennessee	#548	103
6	Missouri	#536	121
7	Indiana	#508	147
8	North Carolina	#503	220
9	Arkansas	#492	20
10	Oklahoma	#485	48

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Nico in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Niko	Abbreviation Of Nicholas. Mythological Nike Was Greek Goddess Of Victory And Root Origin Of Nicholas.	Male	English

Looking for names like Nico?

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Compare Nico to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Nico against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Nico vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Nico vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Nico vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Nico vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Nico vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Nico vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Nico vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Nico vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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