at Nigel... er, no, I hadn't considered that! I think Nicholas has turned out to be a girl, by the way! Will have to save it for imaginary 'thoroughly nice chap' of a DS when I have once

like...

I like Nicholas, but not Nick

Have you considered Nigel ?

My DS is a Nicholas. His friends call him Nick, the family calls him Nickster.

Knickerless

Nicky is nice, though.

Oh boo. If I have another boy, I want to call him Nicholas (Henry as middle name). V. poular though isn't it. Mind you, I fucked up royally (pun intended) with DS's name, Harry (middle name William) after FiL. Only now do I think, bugger, everyone will think I'm a royal stalker, rather than paying respects to dead FiL. Doh!

My ds has the Greek version of this name (Nikolaos). I don't care that it's really common over here, I've always loved it! Don't worry about what other people think, if you like it, go for it! It's you who will be calling out "Nick, come here!" every day, not them, so it's basically down to you if you like it or not.

Nicky is a very upper class shortening of Nicholas. The more exclusive public schools are full of Nickys.

It makes me think of Mog and I think it's a cool classy nn.

boring is good - means there won't be lots of them as everyone else goes for "exotic" names

(*I have 2 boys with "boring" names; they're the only under 25s we've come across with the same name)

It's not too boring is it??... ooh I should stop thinking! The more I think about names the more flaws I find..