Humanverse

Matteo vs Matthias

American parents have registered 33,499 Matteos since 1880, against 13,676 Matthiases. Matteo is still ahead, with 2,455 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Matteo Matthias

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 121 years in which either name was published, Matthias for 77 years and Matteo for 44 years. The lead changed hands 15 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Matteo Matthias
Total US births 33,49913,676
Most in one year 2,589854
Babies in 2025 2,455854
Estimated living today 33,00013,000
Median age today 79
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 138th boys372nd boys
Rank in 2025 146th372nd
First recorded 19111880
Girls / boys 16 / 33,4830 / 13,676

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 Matthiases alive today are over 9; half the Matteos are over 7. That is 2 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 Matteo Matthias
Italy 163,7712,966
France 44,230 Mattéo15,780
Austria 5,54119,532
Belgium 8,7353,889
Switzerland 7,6221,308
England and Wales 3,8241,214
Norway 479277
Poland 55085
Ireland 35970
Scotland 20415
Northern Ireland 414

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: Matteo and Matthias.