Matty
Feminine · “pet form of Martha or Matilda”
Matty is given to both — 759 girls and 171 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Matty is a survivor of the great American pet-name generation — the decades around 1900 when Hattie, Nettie, Lettie, Mattie and Effie stood on birth certificates as complete names rather than as short forms waiting for a long one. On girls, Matty stood behind Martha and Matilda; it was in the American top sixteen hundred in the 1900s, and it has been quietly rare ever since.
How old is the name Matty?
Matty first appears in US birth records in 1904 — 121 years ago. The typical Matty alive today was born around 2005, making them about 20 years old. About 700 people named Matty are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Matty most popular?
Matty peaked in 1905, reaching #1538 nationally. Today it ranks #5722, 4,184 places below that high. See the whole 1905 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Martha to Matty
The story of Matty
For roughly forty years either side of 1900, American parents put diminutives on birth certificates at a scale never seen before or since. The pattern is easy to see in the records: Hattie for Harriet, Nettie for Antoinette or Jeanette, Lettie for Letitia, Carrie for Caroline, Mattie for Martha or Matilda — and in each case the pet form eventually outnumbered the long name it came from. Matty and Mattie split that share, with the -ie spelling always the larger. The fashion collapsed in the 1930s in favor of formal names, and the pet forms only returned after 2000, when the same sound came back attached to different long names.
Meaning
pet form of Martha or Matilda
Two feeder names, both ordinary. Martha is Aramaic for 'lady, mistress of the house', the sister of Mary and Lazarus in the Gospels. Matilda is Germanic, from maht 'might' and hild 'battle'. Both produce Mattie and Matty in speech, and nineteenth-century American families wrote the pet form on the certificate. In modern use Matty is also a short form of Matthew, which is a separate name entirely, from Hebrew Mattityahu, 'gift of Yahweh'.
How the name formed
- Martha
- Mattie
- Matty
Related forms: Mattie · Mathilde · Martha
Pronouncing Matty
MAT-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the short a of mat. Identical to Mattie and Maddie in most American speech, where the double t is flapped and sounds like a d.
Nicknames for Matty
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
- 1904
- Most girls named
- 202028 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1538reached in 1905
- Change vs 2024
- +90.9%21 in 2025, from 11
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.
Matty in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mattie in English — spelling variant
- Mathilde in German — related form
- Martha in Aramaic — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York.
Mattys among us
people named Matty are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 76,537 born in 2025 was named Matty
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Matty
- #5722
- Matty on the 2025 chart
- #917
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Matty went to 21 girls in 2025, but Matti, 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 — 4,805 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 76,537 for Matty 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
Fashion outlook
Matty 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
Matty beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Matty in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is short, warm and instantly familiar without being common.
- It works alone or as the everyday form of Martha, Matilda or Mathilde.
- It has a documented American history rather than being a modern coinage.
- Matty, Mattie and Maddie sound the same in American English and are constantly confused.
- It is now more often heard as a boy's short form, for Matthew.
- A pet form as a legal name gives a bearer no formal version to fall back on.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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Matty
Feminine · #5722 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mattys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 700 people named Matty are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Matty?
- Matty is the most-used spelling in US records — 21 of the 43 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Matti, Mati and Maty.
- How popular is the name Matty in 2025?
- Matty ranks #5722 among US girl names in 2025, with 21 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Matty?
- About 1 in every 76,537 US girls born in 2025 was named Matty — 21 in all.
- Will my child share the name Matty with classmates?
- Matty will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Matty
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Rosina#5722 · Delores#5722 · Vaughn#5722 · Roseline#5722 · Loyal#5722 · Missy#5722 · Danitza#5722 · Margret#5722
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Matty? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Matty and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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