The name Cole is either a shortened form of Nicholas, meaning "victory of the people" in Greek, or derived from the Old English word col, meaning "charcoal." It started gaining popularity in the U.S. in the 1970s and received a huge boost in 1990s thanks to Tom Cruise's character Cole Trickle in the 1990 film "Days of Thunder." It was a top-100 boy's name every year between 1997 and 2011, but recently fell out of the top-150 in 2023 for the first time since 1991. Though rare, some parents prefer to spell it with a K.
