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Matteo vs Matthew

American parents have registered 1,659,655 Matthews since 1880, against 33,499 Matteos. Matthew is still ahead, with 7,008 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Matteo 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 2024, when Matteo had 2,589 and Matthew had 7,115.

Side by side

  Matteo Matthew
Total US births 33,4991,659,655
Most in one year 2,58950,526
Babies in 2025 2,4557,008
Estimated living today 33,0001.5 million
Median age today 736
Peak year 20241983
Best rank 138th boys3rd boys
Rank in 2025 146th32nd
First recorded 19111880
Girls / boys 16 / 33,4835,580 / 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 Matteos are over 7. That is 29 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 Matthew
Italy 163,771564
England and Wales 3,82481,284
France 44,230 Mattéo4,860
Scotland 20414,458
Ireland 35912,256
Belgium 8,7351,435
Switzerland 7,622433
Northern Ireland 416,279
Poland 550719
Norway 479454

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 Matthew.