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Matilde vs Matthew

American parents have registered 1,659,655 Matthews since 1880, against 3,438 Matildes. Matthew is still ahead, with 7,008 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Matilde 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 1903, when Matilde had 15 and Matthew had 102.

Side by side

  Matilde Matthew
Total US births 3,4381,659,655
Most in one year 7450,526
Babies in 2025 277,008
Estimated living today 2,1001.5 million
Median age today 3936
Peak year 19271983
Best rank 924th girls3rd boys
Rank in 2025 4,878th32nd
First recorded 18831880
Girls / boys 3,220 / 2185,580 / 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 Matildes alive today are over 39; half the Matthews are over 36. That is 3 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 Matilde Matthew
England and Wales 55881,284
Italy 60,824564
Ireland 1412,256
France 1,7054,860
Norway 1,694454
Switzerland 1,301433
Belgium 2181,435
Poland 32719

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: Matilde and Matthew.