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Mathieu vs Matilda

American parents have registered 37,280 Matildas since 1880, against 2,416 Mathieus. Matilda is still ahead, with 838 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mathieu against Matilda, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mathieu Matilda

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 146 years in which either name was published, Matilda for 136 years and Mathieu for 10 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Mathieu Matilda
Total US births 2,41637,280
Most in one year 77838
Babies in 2025 20838
Estimated living today 2,30016,000
Median age today 2411
Peak year 20002025
Best rank 1,552nd boys364th girls
Rank in 2025 4,857th364th
First recorded 19551880
Girls / boys 0 / 2,41637,270 / 10

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 Mathieus alive today are over 24; half the Matildas are over 11. That is 13 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 Mathieu Matilda
France 152,8551,245
England and Wales 12431,414
Belgium 4,102279
Switzerland 1,1671,055
Ireland 8830
Poland 38314
Northern Ireland 3319

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: Mathieu and Matilda.