Mateu
surname · Spanish · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mateu is a surname, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 72nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Spanish and Catalan, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: inflection of matar:.
- BRBrazil1 in 444◐
- AOAngola1 in 958
- PTPortugal1 in 1K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈480K ●
- #391 ●
- Sources
- 209 ●
- 1 in 444 ◐
across 8 countries
of 16M given names
248K records
Official registry-verified
Brazil
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Mateus in BR Brazil, PT Portugal, US United States and 7 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
inflection of matar:
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #72 | 476,684△ | 184K rec. | 1 in 444 | 589K | Mateus | 209 |
| AR Argentina | — | 9,127 | 7.1K rec. | — | 1.1K | Mateu | 48 |
| PT Portugal | #137 | 8,071 | 4K rec. | — | 908 | Mateus | 117 |
| FR France | — | 4,512 | 2.8K rec. | — | 214 | Mateu | 164 |
| AO Angola | #16 | 2,348 | 3K rec. | — | — | Mateus | 50 |
| ES Spain | — | 1,856 | 18K rec. | 1 in 27K | 10K | Mateu | 142 |
| CO Colombia | — | 1,816 | 11K rec. | — | 20 | Mateus | 104 |
| UY Uruguay | #917 | 1,292 | 1.3K rec. | — | — | Mateu | 21 |
| US United States | — | 1,290 | 8.3K rec. | 1 in 258K | 1.3K | Mateus | 179 |
| PY Paraguay | — | 738 | 403 rec. | — | — | Mateu | 20 |
| MX Mexico | — | 638 | 736 rec. | — | 2 | Mateu | 37 |
| VE Venezuela | — | 571 | 2.4K rec. | — | — | Mateu | 23 |
Roughly 477K people in Brazil bear this name (about 1 in 444). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Spanish61K74%
- Catalan10K12%
- French4.7K6%
- English2.5K3%
- Portuguese1.1K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | 61,366 | 74% |
| Catalan | 10,172 | 12% |
| French | 4,744 | 6% |
| English | 2,522 | 3% |
| Portuguese | 1,054 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Mateu is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Galician, a male given name, equivalent to English Matthew or Spanish Mateo
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 4 |
| 1901 | 18 |
| 1911 | 63 |
| 1921 | 76 |
| 1931 | 65 |
| 1941 | 117 |
| 1951 | 104 |
| 1961 | 158 |
| 1971 | 131 |
| 1981 | 95 |
| 1991 | 102 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 11 years between 1891–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Eduardo Escalanteb. 1834ESnot in their usual nameSpanish playwright
- Miquel Mateu i Plab. 1898ESSpanish businessperson and politician
- Felipe Mateu y Llopisb. 1901ESSpanish historian, librarian, numismatist, and university teacher (1901–1998)
- Miquel Tarradell i Mateub. 1920ESSpanish historian, archaeologist and professor (1920-1995)
- Yolanda Ríosb. 1951VEnot in their usual nameSpanish actress (1951–2012)
- Sergi Mateub. 1955ESCatalan actor
- Antonio Mateu Lahozb. 1977ESSpanish football referee (born 1977)
- Jofre Mateub. 1980ESSpanish footballer
- Jaume Mateub. 1985MXMexican actor
- Marc Mateub. 1990ESSpanish footballer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 42 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 10K | #549 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 10K | #549 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 1.9K | #1,833 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1.7K | #844 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.5K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.5K | #6,117 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.1K | — |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 947 | #3,912 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 910 | #9,774 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 800 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2020 | 748 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 509 | #16,838 |
Reference works 4
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 90 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Mateu?
- We estimate roughly 480 thousand people bear Mateu (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
- In which country does Mateu have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 477 thousand people bear Mateu in Brazil, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled mateus.
- Where is Mateu most common?
- Mateu is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 444 people carrying it.
- How common is Mateu compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Mateu is the 72nd most common given name of 536,280 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Mateu mean?
- Recorded meaning: inflection of matar:
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mateuThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Mateu” — the 72nd most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.