Mateo
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- God's Gift
- Origin
- Spanish
About the Name Mateo
Mateo is the Spanish form of Matthew, descending through Late Latin Matthaeus from the Greek Matthaios, ultimately from the Hebrew Mattityahu meaning "gift of Yahweh" or "gift of God." Across most of the Spanish-speaking world, Mateo has been a standard Christian boys' name for nearly a millennium — anchored by the apostle Matthew, traditional author of the Gospel of Matthew, and reinforced by hundreds of Mateos across Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American religious and political history.
What's distinctive about Mateo's recent American story is the speed of its uptake. For most of US naming history Mateo was used almost exclusively within Spanish-speaking American communities; SSA records show fewer than 100 baby Mateos born nationally in any given year through the 1980s. The name then climbed sharply through the 2000s and 2010s as part of a broader American shift toward Latinate boys' names — Mateo entered the US top 100 in 2010 and the top 10 by 2020.
The name's appeal is its layered cosmopolitanism: religiously anchored, easy to spell and pronounce in both English and Spanish, three syllables with clean vowels, and a tonal warmth that contrasts with the harder English form Matthew. Common nicknames are scarce — Mat and the rare Teo appear — though the name often lives without nickname use. International forms include Matteo (Italian, with double-T), Matthieu (French), Matthew (English), Matthaios (Greek), and the Hebrew original Mattityahu; the German Matthias is itself a separate but related Apostolic name (the apostle who replaced Judas Iscariot).
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Mateo
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Mateo by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2024 with 11,302 boys named Mateo (boy rank #7 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #8 for boys (11,045 US births). That's 1 places below its 2024 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Mateo Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Mateo the strongest states are California, Texas, New Mexico.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #5 | 19,429 |
| 2 | Texas | #5 | 15,541 |
| 3 | New Mexico | #5 | 843 |
| 4 | Arizona | #6 | 3,081 |
| 5 | Nevada | #8 | 1,217 |
| 6 | Illinois | #12 | 3,901 |
| 7 | Colorado | #20 | 1,652 |
| 8 | Washington | #21 | 1,944 |
| 9 | Oregon | #25 | 972 |
| 10 | Florida | #27 | 4,940 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #261 | 141 |
| 2 | West Virginia | #242 | 79 |
| 3 | Maine | #166 | 65 |
| 4 | Kentucky | #157 | 383 |
| 5 | Montana | #144 | 69 |
| 6 | New Hampshire | #143 | 97 |
| 7 | Ohio | #141 | 1,000 |
| 8 | North Dakota | #131 | 95 |
| 9 | Louisiana | #130 | 458 |
| 10 | Alabama | #130 | 452 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Mateo in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Mateo?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Mateo to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Mateo against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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