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Elijah vs Mateo

American parents have registered 381,915 Elijahs since 1880, against 126,778 Mateos. Elijah is still ahead, with 11,126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elijah against Mateo, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elijah Mateo

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Elijah for 145 years and Mateo for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Elijah Mateo
Total US births 381,915126,778
Most in one year 14,03411,355
Babies in 2025 11,12611,057
Estimated living today 366,000125,000
Median age today 146
Peak year 20112024
Best rank 13th boys7th boys
Rank in 2025 7th8th
First recorded 18801904
Girls / boys 1,304 / 380,61185 / 126,693

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Elijahs alive today are over 14; half the Mateos are over 6. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Elijah Mateo
France 4,45522,725 Matéo
England and Wales 24,0432,874
Switzerland 6622,509
Belgium 6962,306
Ireland 741297
Scotland 819147
Northern Ireland 63548
Poland 42271

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Elijah and Mateo.