Mattison
Feminine · “son of Maud”
Mattison is given to both — 2,339 girls and 222 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Mattison restores a letter that history removed. Madison means the son of Maud; Maud is a worn-down Matilda; and Matilda has a t in it. So writing the name with two t's accidentally undoes eight hundred years of erosion and puts the name closer to its own root than the standard spelling is. Its peak is 2002.
How old is the name Mattison?
Mattison first appears in US birth records in 1988 — 37 years ago. The typical Mattison alive today was born around 2005, making them about 20 years old. About 2,300 people named Mattison are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mattison most popular?
Mattison peaked in 2002, reaching #1258 nationally. Today it ranks #6116, 4,858 places below that high. See the whole 2002 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Matilda to Mattison
The story of Mattison
Madison was an ordinary English surname and an American presidential one — James Madison, fourth president and principal author of the Constitution — and it stayed a surname until 1984, when the film Splash gave the name to a character who takes it from a Manhattan street sign as an obvious joke. The joke stopped being funny very quickly: Madison entered the American girls' top thousand the following year, the top ten by 1997, and stayed there for a decade. Mattison and Madyson belong to the respelling wave that follows any such rise, and this one peaks in 2002.
Meaningscholars disagree
son of Maud, from Matilda — 'mighty in battle'
Madison is generally read as a matronymic from Maud, the medieval English contraction of Matilda, which is Germanic maht, 'might', and hild, 'battle'. A competing derivation makes it a patronymic from Matthew. The Maud reading is the more usual, which means the name descends from a woman rather than a man — unusual among the -son surnames. The doubled t in this spelling has no historical warrant but lands, by coincidence, on the original consonant.
How the name formed
- Matilda
- Maud
- Madison
- Mattison
Related forms: Madison · Madisyn
Pronouncing Mattison
MAT-ih-sun
Three syllables, stress on the first, with the last two reduced. The doubled t is audible in careful speech and disappears in fast American speech, where t between vowels is flapped and sounds like a d — which is why Mattison and Madison are so easily confused.
Nicknames for Mattison
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
- 1988
- Most girls named
- 2002157 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1258reached in 2002
- Change vs 2024
- +5.6%19 in 2025, from 18
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.
Mattison in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Madison in English — spelling variant
- Madisyn in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Illinois, California.
Mattisons among us
people named Mattison are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 84,593 born in 2025 was named Mattison
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Noella test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Mattison's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Noella climbed just as high around 1915, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Noella's path sketches the road Mattison is walking now.
Mattison 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
Mattison beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Mattison in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Mattie and Maddie are both familiar short forms available inside it.
- The pronunciation is obvious from the spelling.
- Its descent from a woman's name is genuine and reverses the usual assumption about -son names.
- It will be corrected to Madison by essentially everyone writing it down.
- In fast American speech it is indistinguishable from Madison.
- Its curve is around 2000, which places a bearer's generation.
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What they receive
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Mattison
Feminine · #6116 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mattisons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,300 people named Mattison are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mattison in 2025?
- Mattison ranks #6116 among US girl names in 2025, with 19 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Mattison?
- About 1 in every 84,593 US girls born in 2025 was named Mattison — 19 in all.
- Will my child share the name Mattison with classmates?
- Mattison will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Mattison
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Alvina#6116 · Mena#6116 · Harvey#6116 · Kellie#6116 · Alden#6116 · Jeanna#6116 · Sammi#6116 · Mamie#6116
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mattison? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Mattison and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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