Danish1 syllableForm of Nicholas
Meaning: victory of the people.
Niels
| Origin | Danish — contracted from Nicolaus through the medieval Danish forms Niclis and Nis |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Victory of the people, from Greek nikē (victory) + laos (people) |
| Pronunciation | NELSS in Danish, one syllable, the vowel closer to bell than to bee. English speakers almost always say NEELS, and Danes let it go |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and uncommon there. In Denmark it has never stopped being used, though it now reads as a name for older men rather than for newborns |
| Variants | Nils (Swedish and Norwegian), Nikolaj, Niklas, Nicholas, Nikolai |
| Nicknames | Nis, the old Danish short form, still a name in its own right in South Jutland |
| Surname from it | Nielsen, which has spent the past century trading places with Jensen for commonest surname in Denmark |
History & meaning
One man owns this name. Niels Bohr built the model of the atom that every schoolchild still draws, took the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for it, and spent the following decades turning Copenhagen into the place where quantum mechanics was argued out. The institute he founded carries the name, and so does an element: hafnium, from Hafnia, the Latin for Copenhagen, discovered in his laboratory. Very few given names are that firmly attached to a single mind.
The name itself is much older and much plainer. Nicolaus came north with the church — the cult of St Nicholas of Myra was enormous in medieval Scandinavia, particularly among sailors — and Danish did to it what Danish does: dropped the Latin ending, then dropped the middle, arriving at Niels by way of Niclis and the short form Nis. Sweden and Norway performed the same operation and stopped at Nils, one letter and one vowel away. The Greek behind both is unchanged, nikē and laos, victory of the people. Denmark had a King Niels who ruled from 1104 to 1134, and the name stayed ordinary for so long afterwards that it generated Nielsen, which has been jostling with Jensen for the top of the Danish surname list ever since. One curiosity worth knowing: the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, who proved before he was twenty-two that no formula can solve the general quintic, spells his name the Danish way because Norway still wrote in Danish when he was born.
Why parents choose it
For a scientifically minded family it is close to the ideal namesake, honouring a physicist who was also, by every account, a decent man in an indecent decade. Beyond that it is short, adult from birth and unmistakably Nordic without being a costume. Set against that: the spelling looks like it should rhyme with heels, and outside Denmark it always will, so the Danish vowel is a battle you will either fight or quietly concede.
Middle names for Niels
The best-known bearers all came with a second name welded on — Niels Henrik Abel, Niels Ryberg Finsen — and that Danish habit still suits it: Niels Henrik, Niels Christian, Niels Anker, Niels Frederik. For how to weigh a one-syllable first name against a longer second, see the middle names guide.
Famous Nielses
Beyond Bohr, Niels Ryberg Finsen won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Medicine for treating lupus vulgaris with concentrated light, the first Dane to win a Nobel of any kind. Niels Henrik Abel gave his name to the Abel Prize, mathematics' answer to the Nobel. Niels Arestrup, the French actor of Danish descent, has won the César three times.
Consider instead
Nils is the same name in Swedish and Norwegian dress, and the spelling gives foreigners slightly less trouble. Nikolai keeps the full Greek length and a good deal more grandeur. Jens is the other great Danish contraction of a saint's name, doing to Johannes exactly what Niels did to Nicolaus.