Mateo

63,143 people in America carry this name — ranked #782 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it mah TAY oh

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M AA0 T EY1 OW0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 63,143 2020 Census
  • Rank #782 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 20.9 about 1 in 5,249 people
  • As a surname 15,024 ranked #2,369 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Mateo

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “gift of the Lord”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Mateo name popularity by year

73,278 babies were given this name since 1904. The busiest year was 2019, with 8,994 of them.

00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Mateo

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Mateo Michael — same opening
  • Mateo Matthew — same opening
  • Mateo Mark — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name of one moment

Almost everyone called Mateo was born in the 2010s. Before and after, the name is barely used — usually the mark of one famous bearer or one popular song.

Is Mateo a boy's or a girl's name?

99.7% men
190 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Same syllables and stress as Mateo

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the second

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

How Mateo is spelled

Mateo is how 79% of them spell it — 80,379 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The same name elsewhere

  • Mat English
  • Feo Italian
  • Mats Swedish
  • Mate Hungarian
  • Mahe Bav
  • Mads Danish
  • Hies Bav
  • Mathe Bav
  • Matyas Pol.|Hung
  • Matvei Russian
  • Mattia Italian
  • Matteo Italian
  • Mattea Italian
  • Matija Serv

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Where in America Mateo is thickest on the ground

In Nevada the name is given 2.9 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Nevada ×2.9
  • Arizona ×2.2
  • New Mexico ×2.1
  • Texas ×2.1
  • California ×1.9

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 7.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 1.4%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 88.3%
  • Two or more races — 1.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.3%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin