Humanverse

Mathilde vs Matilda

American parents have registered 37,280 Matildas since 1880, against 1,793 Mathildes. Matilda is still ahead, with 838 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mathilde against Matilda, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mathilde Matilda

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

Matilda 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 1994, when Mathilde had 12 and Matilda had 36.

Side by side

  Mathilde Matilda
Total US births 1,79337,280
Most in one year 32838
Babies in 2025 21838
Estimated living today 69016,000
Median age today 1511
Peak year 18942025
Best rank 504th girls364th girls
Rank in 2025 5,722nd364th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,793 / 037,270 / 10

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 Mathildes alive today are over 15; half the Matildas are over 11. That is 4 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 Mathilde Matilda
France 146,8701,245
England and Wales 61131,414
Norway 6,006558
Italy 3815,031
Switzerland 1,6001,055
Belgium 2,012279
Scotland 10857
Ireland 7830
Poland 26314

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: Mathilde and Matilda.