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Matheus vs Matthew

American parents have registered 1,659,655 Matthews since 1880, against 1,688 Matheuses. Matthew is still ahead, with 7,008 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Matheus against Matthew, 1880 to 2025 0 15k 30k 45k 60k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Matheus Matthew

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

Matthew has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Matheus had 81 and Matthew had 7,086.

Side by side

  Matheus Matthew
Total US births 1,6881,659,655
Most in one year 10450,526
Babies in 2025 657,008
Estimated living today 1,7001.5 million
Median age today 1536
Peak year 20071983
Best rank 1,516th boys3rd boys
Rank in 2025 2,183rd32nd
First recorded 19881880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,6885,580 / 1,654,075

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 Matthews alive today are over 36; half the Matheuses are over 15. That is 21 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 Matheus Matthew
England and Wales 21381,284
Ireland 3012,256
Northern Ireland 36,279
France 2454,860
Belgium 281,435
Norway 296454
Poland 2719
Switzerland 148433

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: Matheus and Matthew.