Matteo
Masculine · “Gift of God”
Matteo is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 33,483 boys against 16 girls since 1880.
Matteo is the Italian voice of Matthew — three open syllables that land on that long -eo ending Italian shares with Leo and Antonio. It has been an Italian standard for centuries, carried by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci from Renaissance Italy into the court of Ming China. In the US it has been quietly on record for well over a century, and is climbing now.
How old is the name Matteo?
Matteo first appears in US birth records in 1911 — 114 years ago. The typical Matteo is a kid of about 6 — this name's wave is very recent. About 33,000 people named Matteo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Matteo most popular?
Matteo peaked in 2024, reaching #138 nationally. Today it ranks #146, 8 places below that high. See the whole 2024 chart.
Matteo appears on these lists:
- About to go mainstream: next year's top-100
- The sweet spot: familiar but not everywhere
- Three-syllable names with room to move
- Six-letter names in current use
- Names far more common than their rank admits
- Names with a double letter
- all guides
Works in Italian families too:
Where it comes from
From Mattityahu to Matteo
The story of Matteo
The name begins as Hebrew Mattityahu, 'gift of Yahweh'. Greek-speaking Jews shortened it to Matthaios, the form attached to the first Gospel and to the apostle it is named for, and Latin turned that into Matthaeus. Italian wore the Latin down to Matteo, and the name spread with the apostle's cult through every Italian-speaking region — Matteo Ricci, the sixteenth-century Jesuit who reached Beijing, is one of many Italians to carry it. Italian emigration brought it to the Americas, where it has been on US records since the early twentieth century and is now moving upward, strongest in California, Texas and Florida.
Meaning
Gift of God
From the Hebrew name Mattityahu, built from a root meaning 'gift' plus a form of the divine name.
Cultural footprint
Matteo Ricci (b. 1552) — Missionary-scholar who bridged Renaissance Europe and imperial China
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- Mattityahu
- Matthaios
- Matthaeus
- Matteo
Related forms: Matthew · Mateo · Mathieu · Matthias · Mateusz · Máté
Pronouncing Matteo
mah-TAY-oh
Stress on the middle syllable, with the double t given a crisp Italian tap. English speakers often say mat-TAY-oh, which passes without trouble.
Nicknames for Matteo
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
- 1911
- Most boys named
- 20232,517 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #138reached in 2024
- Change vs 2023
- −2.5%2,455 in 2025, from 2,517
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.
Matteo in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Matthew in English — same name
- Mateo in Spanish — same name
- Mathieu in French — same name
- Matthias in German — related form
- Mateusz in Polish — same name
- Máté in Hungarian — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. International figures from Statistics Canada. Sources
Matteos among us
people named Matteo are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 696 born in 2025 was named Matteo
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Matteo
- #146
- Matteo on the 2025 chart
- #5
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Matteo went to 2,455 boys in 2025, but Mateo is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 13,500, which makes it the 5th most-given boys’ name of the year — 141 places above the chart.
- Mateo11,045
- Matteo2,455
About 1 boy in 127 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 696 for Matteo 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 Kirk test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Matteo's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kirk climbed just as high around 1962, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kirk's path sketches the road Matteo is walking now.
Matteo 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 Matteo is headed
Matteo should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind. 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.
Matteo beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Matteo in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two ready-made short forms pulling in opposite directions: Matt, thoroughly familiar in English, and Teo, which works across Italian and Spanish.
- The same name as Matthew, so it has a documented line running back to Hebrew and an unbroken record of use for two thousand years.
- Recognizable in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Polish and Hungarian, each with its own local form.
- Spelled the way it sounds once heard, and already charts in Canada as well as the US.
- Mateo, with one t, is the more common spelling in the US by a wide margin. Expect to correct the second t regularly, and to be asked which one you meant.
- Matt is the most likely nickname in an English-speaking school, which lands somewhere quite different in sound and register from Matteo. Some families love that flexibility; others find it undoes the name.
- The American wave is very recent, so nearly everyone carrying it here is a child. That will change as they grow, but for now the name reads young.
- In a US classroom he is unlikely to meet another Matteo — though Matthews and Mateos are a different matter.
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What they receive
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Matteo
Masculine · #146 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Matteos are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 33,000 people named Matteo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Matteo?
- Matteo is one of 2 recorded spellings. Mateo is the more common one — 11,045 births in 2025 against 2,455 for Matteo.
- How popular is the name Matteo in 2025?
- Matteo ranks #146 among US boy names in 2025, with 2,455 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Matteo?
- About 1 in every 696 US boys born in 2025 was named Matteo — 2,455 in all.
- Will my child share the name Matteo with classmates?
- Matteo will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Matteo
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Elian#147 · Charlie#145 · Luis#144 · Arlo#148 · Dawson#143 · Greyson#149 · Zion#142 · Carlos#150
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Matteo? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Matteo and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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