Nels
#4,539 in the US in 2025
Where Nels stands
#4,539boys’ names · US 2025
Nels was the 4,539th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 22 births.
Its moment was 1918, when 65 babies were given it.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How Nels's figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
- A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Nels was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000 reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
Nels in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 63% as a share of boys' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Nels in New Zealand
Nels never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Nels in England & Wales
Nels does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.
SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #526 | 12 |
| 1890 | #489 | 15 |
| 1900 | #968 | 8 |
| 1910 | #981 | 11 |
| 1920 | #1,045 | 44 |
| 1930 | #1,428 | 26 |
| 1940 | #1,107 | 35 |
| 1950 | #1,052 | 45 |
| 1960 | #1,273 | 38 |
| 1970 | #1,582 | 29 |
| 1980 | #1,449 | 43 |
| 1990 | #2,780 | 23 |
| 2000 | #5,040 | 14 |
| 2010 | #5,251 | 17 |
| 2020 | #5,451 | 16 |
<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.
Where in the United States
The states that registered Nels most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Minnesota | 228 |
| California | 145 |
| Wisconsin | 84 |
| Illinois | 77 |
| Washington | 60 |
| Iowa | 42 |
| Michigan | 42 |
| North Dakota | 34 |
| Nebraska | 19 |
| South Dakota | 12 |
Questions about Nels
How popular is the name Nels?
Nels ranked #4,539 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 22 births registered with the Social Security Administration.
When was Nels most popular?
Nels peaked in 1918, when 65 babies in the United States were given the name.
Is Nels rising or falling?
Measured as a share of all boys' births, Nels has been rising between 2016 and 2025 (+63%).
Names that had their moment when Nels did
Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1918, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026
