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Mathew vs Matthieu

American parents have registered 77,745 Mathews since 1880, against 1,058 Matthieus. Mathew is still ahead, with 235 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mathew Matthieu

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 2022, when Mathew had 271 and Matthieu had 24.

Side by side

  Mathew Matthieu
Total US births 77,7451,058
Most in one year 2,18436
Babies in 2025 23511
Estimated living today 68,0001,000
Median age today 3521
Peak year 19901998
Best rank 148th boys2,394th boys
Rank in 2025 973rd7,194th
First recorded 18801971
Girls / boys 207 / 77,5380 / 1,058

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 Matthieus are over 21. That is 14 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 Matthieu
France 77082,425
England and Wales 3,256131
Belgium 1001,177
Ireland 3936
Poland 76

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 Matthieu.