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Mateo vs Matisse

American parents have registered 126,778 Mateos since 1880, against 582 Matisses. Mateo is still ahead, with 11,057 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mateo Matisse

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

Mateo has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1904 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1992, when Mateo had 60 and Matisse had 8.

Side by side

  Mateo Matisse
Total US births 126,778582
Most in one year 11,35528
Babies in 2025 11,05721
Estimated living today 125,000580
Median age today 615
Peak year 20242021
Best rank 7th boys3,814th boys
Rank in 2025 8th5,608th
First recorded 19041988
Girls / boys 85 / 126,693220 / 362

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 Matisses alive today are over 15; half the Mateos are over 6. That is 9 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 Matisse
France 22,725 Matéo3,085
Belgium 2,3061,181
England and Wales 2,87486
Switzerland 2,50993
Poland 2712

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 Matisse.