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Mattea vs Matthew

American parents have registered 1,659,655 Matthews since 1880, against 1,859 Matteas. Matthew is still ahead, with 7,008 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mattea 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 2007, when Mattea had 101 and Matthew had 18,779.

Side by side

  Mattea Matthew
Total US births 1,8591,659,655
Most in one year 10850,526
Babies in 2025 267,008
Estimated living today 1,8001.5 million
Median age today 2036
Peak year 20061983
Best rank 1,878th girls3rd boys
Rank in 2025 4,987th32nd
First recorded 19751880
Girls / boys 1,859 / 05,580 / 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 Matthews alive today are over 36; half the Matteas are over 20. That is 16 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 Mattea Matthew
England and Wales 8781,284
France 5354,860
Switzerland 158433

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: Mattea and Matthew.