Humanverse

Matt vs Mattie

American parents have registered 133,859 Matties since 1880, against 23,892 Matts. Mattie is still ahead, with 249 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Matt Mattie

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, Mattie for 117 years and Matt for 29 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Matt Mattie
Total US births 23,892133,859
Most in one year 9752,913
Babies in 2025 29249
Estimated living today 17,00030,000
Median age today 5769
Peak year 19591920
Best rank 256th boys96th girls
Rank in 2025 3,757th1,004th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 5 / 23,887133,079 / 780

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 Matties alive today are over 69; half the Matts are over 57. That is 12 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 Matt Mattie
France 2,96020
England and Wales 69268
Ireland 17326
Northern Ireland 327

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: Matt and Mattie.