Is Nicola a male or female name?
Nicola is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in England and Wales at 100% and male usage in Switzerland at 92%. Country context changes the answer.
Result without a country hint
This is the response used when the request does not supply a country. It is a fallback, not a claim that every country has the same distribution.
- Association
- female
- Probability
- 77%
- Sample size
- 59,454
- Confidence
- high
Nicola by country
Only sources that publish observation counts appear in this table. The probability is the dominant-gender share within that country source; sample sizes from different countries cover different years and should not be treated as population rankings.
| Country | Association | Probability | Sample | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales GB | female | 100% | 21,168 | nrs |
| Poland PL | female | 97% | 9,568 | pesel |
| Ireland IE | female | 100% | 8,065 | cso |
| United States US | female | 63% | 8,038 | ssa |
| Switzerland CH | male | 92% | 7,801 | bfs |
| Canada CA | female | 54% | 1,601 | statcan |
| Spain ES | male | 80% | 1,495 | ine |
| France FR | male | 97% | 1,155 | insee |
| Austria AT | female | 67% | 563 | statat |
Attested in 19 countries and territories
Presence means the name appears in a source for that country. Sources without counts cannot support a popularity share.
AT · AU · BE · CA · CH · CZ · DE · ES · FR · GB · IE · IT · MT · NL · NZ · PL · SE · SM · US
Nicola over time
In the United States, 0% of the babies named Nicola in the 1910s were girls, against 29.1% in the 2020s. The name has changed sides over time, so the answer depends on when a person was born. In France, 0% of the babies named Nicola in the 1960s were girls, against 2.6% in the 2010s.
| Decade of birth | United States: girls | Babies | France: girls | Babies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1910s | 0% | 197 | — | |
| 1920s | 3% | 193 | — | |
| 1930s | 16% | 100 | — | |
| 1940s | 77% | 361 | — | |
| 1950s | 65% | 445 | — | |
| 1960s | 67% | 1,019 | 0% | 125 |
| 1970s | 75% | 1,759 | 14% | 110 |
| 1980s | 73% | 1,181 | 4% | 130 |
| 1990s | 66% | 1,196 | 0% | 205 |
| 2000s | 60% | 877 | 0% | 305 |
| 2010s | 49% | 477 | 3% | 195 |
| 2020s | 29% | 227 | — |
Births per decade from the US Social Security Administration (1880–2024) and INSEE (France, 1900–2025); decades with fewer than 100 babies are left out. See boys' names that became girls' names and French names that changed sex.
Look up Nicola with a country
Send a reliable two-letter country code when you have one. Preserve probability, sample size, confidence and source with the category.
curl "https://namegender.com/api/v1/gender?name=Nicola&country=GB" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ng_live_xxxxxxxxxxxx"Copy failed. Select and copy the text.
Method and limits
Counted rows come from national registration sources that publish male and female totals. The attested-country list also includes sources that confirm presence but do not publish a sample size. Those two evidence types are kept separate.
Name data describes a population-level association. It does not identify an individual person's gender. Preserve unknown and low-confidence results, and do not use name inference for employment, medical, financial, insurance, legal or eligibility decisions.
Data version: 2026.10. Read the benchmark methodology and database provenance before applying a threshold.
Questions about Nicola
Is Nicola a male or female name?
Nicola is used as both a female and male name. In counted records, it is associated with female usage in England and Wales at 100% and male usage in Switzerland at 92%. Country context changes the answer.
Why can the result for Nicola change by country?
A name can have different observed distributions in different populations. A country hint narrows the evidence used by the API instead of treating one global result as universal.
Does the name Nicola identify a person's gender?
No. This page describes statistical associations in name records. It cannot identify an individual person and should not be used for consequential decisions.