Humanverse

Mathilde vs Matthew

American parents have registered 1,659,655 Matthews since 1880, against 1,793 Mathildes. Matthew is still ahead, with 7,008 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mathilde 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 1890, when Mathilde had 25 and Matthew had 86.

Side by side

  Mathilde Matthew
Total US births 1,7931,659,655
Most in one year 3250,526
Babies in 2025 217,008
Estimated living today 6901.5 million
Median age today 1536
Peak year 18941983
Best rank 504th girls3rd boys
Rank in 2025 5,722nd32nd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,793 / 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 Mathildes are over 15. That is 21 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 Matthew
France 146,8704,860
England and Wales 61181,284
Scotland 1014,458
Ireland 712,256
Norway 6,006454
Belgium 2,0121,435
Switzerland 1,600433
Italy 381564
Poland 26719

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 Matthew.