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Mathews vs Matteo

American parents have registered 33,499 Matteos since 1880, against 452 Mathewses. Matteo is still ahead, with 2,455 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mathews against Matteo, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mathews Matteo

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 104 years in which either name was published, Matteo for 95 years and Mathews for 9 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Mathews Matteo
Total US births 45233,499
Most in one year 172,589
Babies in 2025 under 52,455
Estimated living today 27033,000
Median age today 237
Peak year 20062024
Best rank 5,072nd boys138th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked146th
First recorded 18961911
Girls / boys 0 / 45216 / 33,483

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 Mathewses alive today are over 23; half the Matteos are over 7. That is 16 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Mathews Matteo
France 1044,230 Mattéo
England and Wales 63,824

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: Mathews and Matteo.