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Mateo vs Matheo

American parents have registered 126,778 Mateos since 1880, against 2,451 Matheos. Mateo is still ahead, with 11,057 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mateo against Matheo, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mateo Matheo

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

Mateo has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1904 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Mateo had 11,057 and Matheo had 344.

Side by side

  Mateo Matheo
Total US births 126,7782,451
Most in one year 11,355344
Babies in 2025 11,057344
Estimated living today 125,0002,400
Median age today 64
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 7th boys750th boys
Rank in 2025 8th750th
First recorded 19041996
Girls / boys 85 / 126,6930 / 2,451

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 Mateos alive today are over 6; half the Matheos are over 4. 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 Mateo Matheo
France 22,725 Matéo60,460 Mathéo
Belgium 2,3064,852 Mathéo
Norway 7593,824
Switzerland 2,509972 Mathéo
England and Wales 2,874131
Austria 1,134872
Ireland 2973
Poland 27112
Scotland 1473

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: Mateo and Matheo.