Matthew
The boy's name Matthew has been in the national records since 1880, with 1,659,655 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 32nd. About 1.5 million Matthews are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 36.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Matthew boys named Matthew
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,659,655
- Estimated living today
- 1.5 million
- Median age today
- 36
- Peak year
- 1983
- Best rank
- 3rd
- Rank in 2025
- 32nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 5,580 / 1,654,075
How old the living Matthews are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,659,655 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.5 million are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 201,000 of them are children and 35,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1989 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Hebrew
From earlier Matheu, from Old French Mathieu, from Latin Matthaeus, from Ancient Greek Ματθαῖος, from Aramaic מַתַּי. Compare Hebrew מַתִּתְיָהוּ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Matthews
- Matthew the Apostle (10–74)Christian evangelist and apostle (10-74)
- Matthew McConaughey (born 1969)American actor
- Matthew Perry (1969–2023)American-Canadian actor
- Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)British poet and cultural critic
- Matthew Broderick (born 1962)American actor
- Matthew Fox (born 1966)American actor
- Matthew Lillard (born 1970)American actor
- Matthew Flinders (1774–1814)English navigator and cartographer
People named Matthew with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Matthew is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Matthew is most concentrated in New Hampshire (1.7×), Alaska (1.6×), Delaware (1.5×), Connecticut (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1983
The most popular boys’ names the year Matthew peaked:
Matthew elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Matthew | 81,284 | 6th |
| New Zealand boys | Matthew | 23,459 | 2nd |
| Scotland boys | Matthew | 14,458 | 15th |
| Ireland boys | Matthew | 12,256 | 15th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Matthew | 6,279 | 1st |
| France boys | Matthew | 4,855 | 322nd |
| Belgium boys | Matthew | 1,435 | 171st |
| Poland boys | Matthew | 719 birth registrations | 144th |
| Italy boys | Matthew | 564 | — |
| Norway boys | Matthew | 454 | 264th |
| Switzerland boys | Matthew | 433 | 288th |
| France girls | Matthew | 5 | 4,354th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Matthew: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Matthew | 182 | 0.015% | 416th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Matthew | 220 | 0.051% | 127th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Matthew | 31 | 0.048% | 94th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Matthew is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.06% of children were given it – 57 of them.
Matthew: rank by region
In 2025, Matthew was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Matthew | 536 | 10 |
| Wallonia | Matthew | 267 | 10 |
In 2024, Matthew was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Podkarpackie | Matthew | 161 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Matthew appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (178th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Matthew by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 4 | 580th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Matthew among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Matthew | 1,495 | 2,681 |
| Finland boys | Matthew | 250 | 438 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Matthew lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 875 men called Matthew were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Matthew | 76 | 0.076 | 959 |
| Málaga | Matthew | 60 | 0.069 | 855 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Matthew | 19 | 0.061 | 1,032 |
| Balears, Illes | Matthew | 37 | 0.059 | 1,042 |
| Palmas, Las | Matthew | 33 | 0.057 | 1,437 |
| Barcelona | Matthew | 158 | 0.054 | 1,068 |
Listed in 31 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 21 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Matthew against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.