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The first name 
Nola

Nola is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.

Nola is a common name for girls!

The name Nola isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Nola ranks 627. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 3 were named Nola. In the entire USA, approximately 17,557 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Nola. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.

You won't believe all there is 
to discover about the name
 
Nola

What does the name 
Nola mean?

The name Nola derived from names like Magnolia or the Irish Fionnuala, and was orignally used as a nickname. It means for example ‘white shoulder’ or ‘of great excellence’.

Around 1900,... Nola was much better known as a given name than in the second half of the 20th century. Since the 2000s, its popularity is slowly rising again.

Nola -
evergreen, but special

For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their daughter Nola annualy. This means that there have been girls named Nola who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus women named Nola have consistently been special. The name was particularly popular a long time ago in the 19th century. In one particular year, long before the first passenger flight and even before there was the first real radio, parents liked Nola even more than any other time: in 1894, it holds its present record of rank #246 in the list of the most popular girls' names.

In years where the graph has no value, the name Nola was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.

How popular was Nola 2022 among young parents?

Nola has never been ranked higher than #246. In 2022, she rivaled the 573 names that preceded her on the list. In total, 466 girls named Nola were born in that year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Nola were born, there have been 25 newborns who received this name.

Nola has 4 letters 
and begins with an N

Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter N is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for girls' names: 4.1% of all common girls' names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters of girls' names are A and S, while X and U are the least common initials of girls' names.

With four letters, the name Nola is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.

Thus, it follows that with 4.1% of all girls' names starting with an N, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. Nevertheless, there are girls' names with N that are quite common, the most common in the U.S. at present is Nancy.

Other names with 
N, o, l and a

If you take all the letters in the name Nola – N, o, l and a – and put them together again, you can form other names, such as Noal or others.

With hands, flags and sounds 
How to say Nola

If your name is Nola and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...

This is how you spell the name Nola

So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Nola, you can simply say:

Nut

Orange

Lion

Apple

This is how the name Nola is spelled in the NATO phonetic alphabet

The NATO alphabet often helps people spell words on the phone or radio when there are communication problems.

How do you write Nola in Braille?

Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.

Nola

Nola

You want to tell a deaf person that your name is Nola

Just use American Sign Language!

The name Nola is particularly colorful in the Semaphore flag signaling system!

These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.

N
O
L
A

Have you ever waved the name Nola

In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.

N
O
L
A

Beeping like crazy...

In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Nola sounds like this: