Holiday Calendar

National Nicole Day

Next celebratedWednesday, December 23, 2026

A fourteenth-century Nicole dismantled every proof that the Earth stands still, then wrote that he believed it did anyway. National Nicole Day belongs to a name France rebuilt from the Greek for victory of the people.

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Last updated September 5, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEDecember 23
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The footprint documents observance, not origin.

National Nicole Day circulates on social platforms and on holiday-listing sites each 23 December, a real footprint that records the observance without accounting for it. No founder, proclamation or establishment record has been identified.

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INTRO

Thirty-nine years inside America's top hundred girls' names

Nicole was one of America's ten most common girls' names for eleven straight years. National Nicole Day falls on a name that its own French short form overtook in 2025.

The Social Security Administration counted 962 girls named Colette against 803 named Nicole. Colette had not led since 1961. It is a single year and a margin of 159 births, so it is a turn rather than a trend.

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ORIGINS

Nicole Day history

INTRODUCTION

The name behind the day is a French rebuild of a Greek one. Nikolaos joins nike, victory, to laos, people, and Nicole is the French feminine form of the Nicholas it produced. Two medieval French lives carried forms of that name a long way before it ever reached an American birth record.

CHAPTER 01

The bishop who argued the Earth might be turning

Nicole Oresme was born in Normandy around 1320, led the College of Navarre, and translated Aristotle into French for Charles V. He was the first to prove that the harmonic series diverges. He drew changing quantities on rectangular coordinates, laying groundwork that later led to Descartes and analytic geometry.

One passage takes apart every proof that the Earth stands still. Then, having shown that a daily rotation could not be ruled out, he wrote that he believed it stood still anyway. He died bishop of Lisieux in 1382.

CHAPTER 02

A carpenter's daughter, and the name that got shorter

Colette was born at Corbie in Picardy on 13 January 1381, daughter of a carpenter at the Benedictine abbey there. The Catholic Encyclopedia opens its article on her by calling the name a diminutive of Nicoletta, and counts seventeen convents founded in her lifetime plus an eighteenth she had begun at Pont-a-Mousson. She was canonized in 1807, and the shortened name is the one that stuck.

CHAPTER 03

What the American files record

SSA's files first record Nicole in 1937, at nine girls. That is a statement about the agency's five-birth reporting floor rather than about American children, because the floor screens out a much larger share of a small file than of a large one. The name entered the top hundred in 1969.

It held that ground for thirty-nine consecutive years. Nicole ranked sixth in 1982, its best showing, while 1985 produced more Nicoles than any other year.

CHAPTER 04

A day nobody has signed

National Nicole Day has no founder, no proclamation and no establishing record. Search for one with the largest holiday-listing sites set aside, and what comes back is social posts. The name, unlike the day, has a documented past and a living statistical record.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A carpenter's daughter born at Corbie

The future Saint Colette is born on 13 January at Corbie in Picardy, and is known by a shortened form of Nicoletta.

Nicole Oresme dies bishop of Lisieux

He dies on 11 July, having been elected to the see of Lisieux in 1377 and consecrated the following year.

Rome canonizes Colette

Pope Pius VII canonizes her on 24 May, more than three centuries after her death at Ghent.

Colette's last year in front

487 girls are recorded as Colette against 273 as Nicole, the last year Colette leads before 2025.

Nicole enters the American top hundred

The name jumps to 47th from 108th the year before.

Colette outnumbers Nicole again

962 girls are recorded as Colette against 803 as Nicole, the first time the shorter name has led since 1961.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Nicole Day

EVIDENCE

Rank, count and share peak in three different years.

Nicole's rank, its raw count and its share of American girls peak in three different years, and the share peak sits within half a percent of the year behind it. A page that names one peak without naming its basis is guessing on the reader's behalf.

LANGUAGE

Three lengths of one name, all still in use

Nicole, Nicolette and Colette are the same Greek compound worn down by different amounts, and French kept all three in circulation. The day names one of the three, and all three still appear in the national files.

METHOD

Spelling decides the answer as much as fashion

The federal files count Nichole, Nicolle, Nikole and Nikki as separate names from Nicole, so any claim about how common the name is depends on where you draw the line around it. Add those four spellings back and Nicole's 976 is ahead of Colette again.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Nicole Day by the Numbers

594,500
US girls named Nicole since 1937
22,966
Nicoles born in 1985, the peak
62.9%
Share born 1975 to 1994

AT A GLANCE

Nicole at a glance

Meaning
Victory of the people
Root words
Greek nike and laos
Parent name
Nicholas
Masculine form
Nicolas, in French
French diminutives
Colette, Coline, Nicolette
English variants
Nichole, Nikole, Nikkole

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Nicole Day

Nicole gained 694 births and lost a place

Between 1982 and 1983 the name went from 21,706 girls to 22,400 and slipped from sixth to seventh. Exactly one name moved above it and none dropped below: Ashley, which went from seventeenth to fourth in a single year.

Divergent peaks are the rule, not the exception

Of the 89 girls' names that have ever reached the American top ten, 71 have their best rank in a different year from their largest crop of babies. The median gap is five years, and Nicole's is three.

A five-birth floor is not a fixed bar

SSA withholds any name with fewer than five births in a year, a threshold worth 18 per million girls in its 1904 file and under five per million in its 1934 one. A name missing from an early year may have been in the country and out of the paperwork.

Two publishers give Nicole two different 2025 ranks

SSA numbers tied names consecutively in alphabetical order, which puts Nicole 383rd in 2025. Behind the Name breaks ties the other way and prints 382nd, which is why the count, 803, is the figure worth quoting.

Colette is having its best year on record

Its 2025 total is the highest in a file that begins in 1880, and its rank of 316th is the best it has held. Each of the last four years beat the one before it.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Nicole Day

READ

Read the medieval Nicole on a spinning Earth

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Nicole Oresme lays out his argument that nothing available to him could disprove a daily rotation, and his decision to believe in a still Earth regardless. It is a short read on how a careful person handles an open question.

COMPARE

Compare the spellings before you compare the names

Nichole, Nicolle, Nikole, Nikki and Nicolette each get their own row in the national files. Pull all five up beside Nicole and you can watch one naming wave split itself across six spellings.

WATCH

Watch the performance that won the 2003 Oscar

Nicole Kidman won Best Actress at the ceremony held on 23 March 2003, for the 2002 film The Hours. The film is a 2002 release and the ceremony was in 2003, which is why the award turns up filed under both years.

ASK

Ask the oldest Nicole you know when she was born

Most American Nicoles were born inside a narrow band of years, so the name doubles as a rough birth-cohort marker. Comparing notes across two generations of a family is a fast way to see a naming wave from the inside.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Nicole Day?

1 / 7

Nicole is the French feminine form of which name?

Answer

No one is documented as its founder. There is no founder, proclamation, registration or establishment record for the day, and a search that set aside the largest holiday-listing sites turned up only social posts. The record this page keeps is about the name, not about the observance's authorship.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

8sources
1primary records
3independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Social Security AdministrationTabulated as of March 1, 2026
Beyond the Top 1000 Names: national data
Every US given name with at least five births a year, 1880 to 2025.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Nicole
The name's Greek roots, its French diminutives and its English spelling variants.
View source
Behind the Name
Popularity for the name Nicole in the United States
A year-by-year US rank series for Nicole, published with its own tie-breaking rule.
View source
Behind the Name
Nicholas
The Greek Nikolaos, its parts nike and laos, and the fourth-century bishop behind it.
View source
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Nicole Oresme
A scholarly account of Oresme's mathematics, his career and his writing on the Earth.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica2 March 2026
St. Colette
Colette's birth at Corbie in 1381, her Poor Clares reform, and her canonization.
View source
New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia1908
St. Colette
Michael Bihl's 1908 life of Colette, counting the convents founded in her lifetime.
View source
Wikipedia
75th Academy Awards
The March 2003 ceremony, with its full list of nominees and winners.
View source
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