Mattie
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-ttie]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Strong In War
- Origin
- French
About the Name Mattie
Mattie is a diminutive form most closely associated with Martha and Matilda, names that carry separate but complementary roots. Martha is Aramaic in origin, meaning "lady" or "mistress," while Matilda derives from the Old High German Mahthildis, built from maht (might, strength) and hild (battle) — yielding the meaning "strong in war" or "mighty in battle." As a standalone registered name in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Mattie carried the easy warmth of Southern and Midwestern American naming culture, where short affectionate forms were considered complete names rather than abbreviations.
The name's deepest American roots lie in the Victorian and Gilded Age eras. It appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1880, the earliest year tracked, and peaked as early as 1882 at rank #25. Its total top-1000 births across the tracked run reach nearly 69,000. After a long gradual fade, Mattie made a quiet modern return, appearing at #922 in 2014 — evidence that the name's vintage warmth has found renewed appeal among parents drawn to antique nicknames that feel fresh precisely because of their age.
Mattie occupies an interesting position in the contemporary landscape: soft enough to feel gentle, grounded enough to feel strong, and old enough to carry real historical weight without being obscure. Its association with the Charles Portis novel True Grit and its adaptations — whose fierce young protagonist is named Mattie — adds a layer of literary grit to the name's sweetness. Recorded variants include Matteo and Matty.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Mattie
US Popularity History (1880–2014)
Annual US births named Mattie by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1920 with 2,902 girls named Mattie (girl rank #96 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2014, ranked #922 for girls (292 US births). That's 826 places below its 1920 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 Mattie Most Popular?
Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Mattie the strongest states are Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #282 | 114 |
| 2 | Arkansas | #418 | 75 |
| 3 | Alabama | #423 | 118 |
| 4 | Kentucky | #458 | 85 |
| 5 | Tennessee | #500 | 143 |
| 6 | Georgia | #585 | 154 |
| 7 | Missouri | #595 | 73 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #643 | 47 |
| 9 | Louisiana | #652 | 61 |
| 10 | South Carolina | #718 | 45 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pennsylvania | #902 | 42 |
| 2 | Ohio | #868 | 45 |
| 3 | Indiana | #792 | 24 |
| 4 | Wisconsin | #763 | 26 |
| 5 | North Carolina | #732 | 127 |
| 6 | South Carolina | #718 | 45 |
| 7 | Louisiana | #652 | 61 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #643 | 47 |
| 9 | Missouri | #595 | 73 |
| 10 | Georgia | #585 | 154 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Mattie in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Mattie?
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 Mattie to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Mattie against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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