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Mateo vs Matilda

American parents have registered 126,778 Mateos since 1880, against 37,280 Matildas. Mateo is still ahead, with 11,057 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mateo Matilda

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, Matilda for 103 years and Mateo for 43 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Mateo Matilda
Total US births 126,77837,280
Most in one year 11,355838
Babies in 2025 11,057838
Estimated living today 125,00016,000
Median age today 611
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 7th boys364th girls
Rank in 2025 8th364th
First recorded 19041880
Girls / boys 85 / 126,69337,270 / 10

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 Matildas alive today are over 11; half the Mateos are over 6. That is 5 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 Matilda
England and Wales 2,87431,414
France 22,725 Matéo1,245
Italy 7215,031
Switzerland 2,5091,055
Belgium 2,306279
Norway 759558
Ireland 297830
Scotland 147857
Poland 271314
Northern Ireland 48319

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 Matilda.