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Mateo vs Mathew

American parents have registered 126,778 Mateos since 1880, against 77,745 Mathews. Mateo is still ahead, with 11,057 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mateo against Mathew, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mateo Mathew

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, Mathew for 126 years and Mateo for 20 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mateo Mathew
Total US births 126,77877,745
Most in one year 11,3552,184
Babies in 2025 11,057235
Estimated living today 125,00068,000
Median age today 635
Peak year 20241990
Best rank 7th boys148th boys
Rank in 2025 8th973rd
First recorded 19041880
Girls / boys 85 / 126,693207 / 77,538

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 Mathews alive today are over 35; half the Mateos are over 6. That is 29 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 Mateo Mathew
France 22,725 Matéo770
England and Wales 2,8743,256
Belgium 2,306100
Scotland 147676
Ireland 297393
Poland 2717
Northern Ireland 4841

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: Mateo and Mathew.