Matheo
Masculine · “Gift of God”
Matheo belongs to one of the most traveled name families in the world: the line that runs from the Hebrew Mattityahu through Greek Matthaios to the apostle Matthew, and out into Spanish Mateo, Italian Matteo and French Mathéo. The silent h is the old Greek theta, kept in the spelling long after it stopped being pronounced. Said aloud, it is three open vowels and no hard edges.
How old is the name Matheo?
Matheo first appears in US birth records in 1996 — 29 years ago. The typical Matheo is a kid of about 4 — this name's wave is very recent. About 2,400 people named Matheo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Matheo most popular?
Matheo peaked in 2025, reaching #750 nationally. Today it ranks #750, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Matheo appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Mattityahu to Matheo
The story of Matheo
The name begins in Hebrew as Mattityahu and enters the wider world through the Greek New Testament, where Matthaios is the tax collector who becomes one of the twelve apostles. Latin Matthaeus carried it across medieval Europe, and each language kept its own shape: Mateo in Spanish, Matteo in Italian, Mateus in Portuguese, Mathieu and Mathéo in French. Matheo is the Iberian form wearing the older, Latin-looking h — a spelling documented in Spanish and Portuguese records for centuries and revived in modern France and Scandinavia as Mathéo. In US records it is a recent arrival, riding the same wave that carried Mateo and Matteo into wide use.
Meaning
Gift of God
From Hebrew Mattityahu, combining a word for gift with the divine name; it reached Europe through Greek Matthaios and Latin Matthaeus.
How the name formed
- Mattityahu
- Matthaios
- Matthaeus
- Mateo
- Matheo
Related forms: Mateo · Matteo · Mathéo · Mateus · Matthew · Máté
Pronouncing Matheo
mah-TAY-oh
The h is silent. French speakers say roughly ma-tay-OH with the stress at the end; some English speakers land on MAT-ay-oh. Any of these will be understood, but it helps to say your preferred version first.
Nicknames for Matheo
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1996
- Most boys named
- 2025344 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #750reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +20.3%344 in 2025, from 286
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Matheo in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mateo in Spanish — spelling variant
- Matteo in Italian — same name
- Mathéo in French — spelling variant
- Mateus in Portuguese — same name
- Matthew in English — same name
- Máté in Hungarian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Matheos among us
people named Matheo are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 4,965 born in 2025 was named Matheo
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Matheo
- #750
- Matheo on the 2025 chart
- #561
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Matheo went to 344 boys in 2025, but Mattheo is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 406, which makes it the 561st most-given boys’ name of the year — 189 places above the chart.
- Matheo344
- Mattheo62
About 1 boy in 4,207 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 4,965 for Matheo itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Barron test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Matheo's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Barron climbed just as high around 1966, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Barron's path sketches the road Matheo is walking now.
Matheo is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Matheo is headed
Matheo looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 31% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Matheo beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Matheo in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The underlying name has an unbroken record of close to two thousand years, from the Greek gospels through Latin into every Romance language.
- Ready-made short forms already in real use: Teo, Matt, Matty.
- Recognizable everywhere the Mateo and Matteo forms are known, which is most of Europe and the Americas.
- The meaning is settled rather than guessed at — gift of God — with no competing readings to explain.
- The h is the whole difficulty. Most people will default to Mateo or Matteo, so this is a name that gets spelled out at doctors' offices, on coffee cups and in email for life.
- Stress and vowels vary by language — mah-TAY-oh, ma-tay-OH, MAT-ay-oh — so he will hear his name said several ways and will need a preferred version of his own.
- In shared spaces with Mateo, Matteo and Matthew, the nickname Matt belongs to everyone, and a Matheo may end up going by Teo instead.
- Its wave in the US is genuinely recent, so nearly everyone carrying this spelling here is a child. That means very little name recognition for now, and almost certainly no second Matheo in his class.
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What they receive
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Matheo
Masculine · #750 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Matheos are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,400 people named Matheo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Matheo?
- Matheo is the most-used spelling in US records — 344 of the 406 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Mattheo.
- How popular is the name Matheo in 2025?
- Matheo ranks #750 among US boy names in 2025, with 344 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Matheo?
- About 1 in every 4,965 US boys born in 2025 was named Matheo — 344 in all.
- Will my child share the name Matheo with classmates?
- Matheo will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Matheo
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Forest#750 · Azaiah#749 · Bode#748 · Junior#752 · Chandler#753 · Murphy#754 · Noe#754 · Franco#746
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Matheo? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Matheo and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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