What is Nick short for?
Nick is short for Nicholas and Nikhil. In 2025, 124 boys in the United States were given Nick as their full name, with nothing longer behind it, according to Social Security records.
The meeting point
Two men called Nick: one carries Greek victory, the other Sanskrit wholeness. The names have nothing to do with each other; the nickname is the meeting point.
Nicholas · short for Nicholas: Greek nikē "victory" + laos "people" (source)
Nikhil · the natural short form of Nikhil, Sanskrit "whole, entire": in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, Gogol's good name Nikhil is shortened to exactly this, and it is the hinge of the novel (source)
Greek and Sanskrit are both Indo-European: unrelated roots, not different language families.
The names behind Nick
Each count is the number of children given that name in the United States in 2025, from US Social Security records. A name given to fewer than five children in a year is left out of the published file.