Niels
A rare name in Poland: only about a hundred men carry it, so most Poles have never met one. Germanic at root and Scandinavian in use, it means "victory of the people".
Niels Pronunciation
Niels is pronounced NYELS (/ɲɛls/).
What Niels means
Where Niels comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Niels belongs to Scandinavia, worn in Denmark and Norway for centuries. The name reaches back to a Germanic root, and the sense it carries is "victory of the people." That meaning attached to the name over time, as the form settled into Danish and Norwegian speech.
Two bearers fixed Niels in the record. Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his work on atomic structure. Niels Henrik Abel, the Norwegian mathematician, gave his name to the Abel Prize. Both men made the name a fixture of the North.
There are no diminutives here. Niels stands on its own, short already. In a Polish class register the name would read as foreign, a marker of Scandinavian roots among the Mikołajs and Mateuszes. A child called Niels carries the meaning "victory of the people".
How many people are named Niels
1 in 207245 men in Poland is named Niels. 103 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3380 among male names.
Niels's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.
Niels as a middle name
Niels is a first name for 103 men in Poland and a middle name for another 13, an 89/11 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 2672nd, between Neville (13) and Olawale (13).
-
#2670 Nazir13
-
#2671 Neville13
-
#2672 Niels13
-
#2673 Olawale13
-
#2674 Oleh13