Mikola
A Ukrainian cousin of Mikołaj, from a Slavic root meaning "victory of the people". In Poland it stays rare and keeps fading: only about 130 men carry it, and most people never meet one.
Mikola Pronunciation
Mikola is pronounced mee-KO-lah (/miˈkɔla/).
What Mikola means
Where Mikola comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Mikola is the Ukrainian form of the name Poles write as Mikołaj. The two are siblings. Both go back to a compound meaning victory of the people, and Ukrainian speakers have carried Mikola for centuries as their own everyday version.
The bearer most people picture is Saint Nicholas, whose feast falls on 6 December. In Ukrainian tradition he is Sviatyi Mykolai, the gift-bringer who comes that night rather than at Christmas. A child named Mikola grows up with his name-day set close to the first snow.
The sense of victory of the people sits oddly on a saint known for charity. That meaning comes from the old roots of the name, not from anything Mikola himself did.
On a Polish school register today, a Mikola sits a line apart from every Mikołaj. Same name, different home. The diminutives run to Kolya and Mykolka in Ukrainian. The meaning holds under all of them, zwycięzca narodu.
How many people are named Mikola
1 in 161714 men in Poland is named Mikola. 132 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2893 among male names.
Mikola's popularity over time
Fewer than 2 boys were given the name in 2025. It has been stable for a decade.