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Mathew vs Mathieu

American parents have registered 77,745 Mathews since 1880, against 2,416 Mathieus. Mathew is still ahead, with 235 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mathew against Mathieu, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mathew Mathieu

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

Mathew 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 2021, when Mathew had 315 and Mathieu had 44.

Side by side

  Mathew Mathieu
Total US births 77,7452,416
Most in one year 2,18477
Babies in 2025 23520
Estimated living today 68,0002,300
Median age today 3524
Peak year 19902000
Best rank 148th boys1,552nd boys
Rank in 2025 973rd4,857th
First recorded 18801955
Girls / boys 207 / 77,5380 / 2,416

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 Mathieus are over 24. That is 11 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 Mathew Mathieu
France 770152,855
Belgium 1004,102
England and Wales 3,256124
Ireland 3938
Poland 738
Northern Ireland 413

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: Mathew and Mathieu.