Matti
Feminine · “Hebrew Mattityahu”
Matti is given to both — 656 girls and 77 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Finnish has no grammatical gender and no gendered pronouns. One word, han, covers he and she, and Finnish speakers learning English famously mix the two up for years. Matti is a Finnish man's name, which is worth knowing before reading it as a woman's.
How old is the name Matti?
Matti first appears in US birth records in 1980 — 45 years ago. The typical Matti alive today was born around 2005, making them about 20 years old. About 600 people named Matti are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Matti most popular?
Matti peaked in 2008, reaching #4448 nationally. Today it ranks #9457, 5,009 places below that high. See the whole 2008 chart.
Where it comes from
From Mattityahu to Matti
The story of Matti
Finnish belongs to the Uralic family, unrelated to the Indo-European languages around it, and one of its structural features is a complete absence of grammatical gender. Nouns are not masculine or feminine, adjectives do not agree in gender, and the third-person pronoun han serves for anyone. This is not unusual worldwide; Hungarian, Estonian, Turkish, Persian, Chinese and Japanese all do something similar. It becomes visible when Finnish speakers learn English and have to choose he or she in real time for a distinction their language never asks them to make, an error that persists long after their English is otherwise fluent. It also means that a Finnish name carries its sex only by convention and history, not by any ending, so a name's sex has to be learned name by name rather than read off the form.
Meaning
Hebrew Mattityahu, gift of Yah
Matti is the standard Finnish form of Matthew, from Hebrew Mattityahu, gift of Yah, and it is male in Finland. In American use the spelling serves as a female short form of Matilda, Madison or Mattea. The two are unrelated in origin and coincide only in spelling. The American female peak is 2008.
How the name formed
- Mattityahu
- Matthew
- Matti
Related forms: Matti · Mattie · Maddie
Pronouncing Matti
MAT-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Finnish holds the doubled t noticeably longer than English does, which is a meaningful distinction in Finnish and not in English.
Nicknames for Matti
Moderate
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
- 1980
- Most girls named
- 200834 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #4448reached in 2008
- Change vs 2024
- 0.0%10 in 2025, from 10
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.
Matti in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Matti in Finnish — related form
- Mattie in English — spelling variant
- Maddie in English — related form
Mattis among us
people named Matti are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 160,727 born in 2025 was named Matti
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Matti
- #9457
- Matti on the 2025 chart
- #917
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Matti went to 10 girls in 2025, but Matty, Mati and Maty are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 43, which makes it the 917th most-given girls’ name of the year — 8,540 places above the chart.
- Matty21
- Matti10
- Mati7
- Maty5
About 1 girl in 37,378 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 160,727 for Matti 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 Lillah test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Matti's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lillah climbed just as high around 1922, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lillah's path sketches the road Matti is walking now.
Matti sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Matti beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Matti in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two syllables and five letters, impossible to mispronounce.
- Matilda and Mattea are both available as formal versions.
- Matt works as a short form for either sex.
- It is a man's name in Finland.
- Mattie and Maddie are both commoner in American use.
- It reads as a short form rather than a full name.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Matti
Feminine · #9457 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mattis are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Matti are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Matti?
- Matti is one of 4 recorded spellings. Matty is the more common one — 21 births in 2025 against 10 for Matti.
- How popular is the name Matti in 2025?
- Matti ranks #9457 among US girl names in 2025, with 10 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Matti?
- About 1 in every 160,727 US girls born in 2025 was named Matti — 10 in all.
- Will my child share the name Matti with classmates?
- Matti will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Matti
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Leta#9457 · Inga#9457 · Delphia#9457 · Cammie#9457 · Lisandra#9457 · Amee#9457 · Venecia#9457 · Annetta#9457
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Matti? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Matti and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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