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Mateo vs Matthias

American parents have registered 126,778 Mateos since 1880, against 13,676 Matthiases. Mateo is still ahead, with 11,057 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mateo Matthias

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 123 years in which either name was published, Mateo for 76 years and Matthias for 47 years. The lead changed hands 29 times.

19 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Mateo Matthias
Total US births 126,77813,676
Most in one year 11,355854
Babies in 2025 11,057854
Estimated living today 125,00013,000
Median age today 69
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 7th boys372nd boys
Rank in 2025 8th372nd
First recorded 19041880
Girls / boys 85 / 126,6930 / 13,676

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 Matthiases alive today are over 9; half the Mateos are over 6. That is 3 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 Matthias
France 22,725 Matéo15,780
Austria 1,13419,532
Belgium 2,3063,889
England and Wales 2,8741,214
Switzerland 2,5091,308
Italy 7212,966
Norway 759277
Ireland 29770
Poland 27185
Scotland 14715
Northern Ireland 484

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 Matthias.