Matà

surname · Latin script

Matà is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Costa Rica it is the 80th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Old Galician-Portuguese mata, possibly from Late Latin matta (“reed mat”). Matà is also written เมธา in Thai, Μάτα in Greek and 조세형 in Korean (Hangul).

  • CRCosta Rica1 in 308(measured from records)
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 630
  • MXMexico≈1 in 960

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Matà itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Brazil (measured from records)

510,309 named Mota

#896 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames, spellings grouped

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
389 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 308 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Matà in other scripts: Thai, Greek, Korean (Hangul) and 1 more

(measured from records)
MatàLatin(measured from records)
เมธาMatà in Thai(measured from records)
ΜάταMatà in Greek(measured from records)
조세형Matà in Korean (Hangul)(measured from records)
మాతMatà in Telugu(measured from records)

11 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Mata in BR Brazil, MX Mexico, US United States and 4 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)
Derivation of Matà: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Matà
  1. Old Galician-Portuguesemata(measured from records)
  2. Late Latinmatta“reed mat”(measured from records)

From Old Galician-Portuguese mata, possibly from Late Latin matta (“reed mat”).

Cited for this meaning 10

  • A dictionary of surnames
  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
  • The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
  • Digital Pāḷi Dictionary

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Matà is found

(measured from records)

Matà counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Matà is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#212510,309as Mota1 in 415510KMata157
MX Mexico#135≈140,000 est.≈1 in 9642.5KMata195
US United States—48,1201 in 6.9K48KMata389
VE Venezuela#114≈45,000 est.≈1 in 634—Mata109
PH Philippines#386≈34,000 est.≈1 in 3.4K—Mata75
CR Costa Rica#8016,5681 in 30817KMata97
SV El Salvador#187≈5,900 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Mata51

510,309 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname), counting the spelling mota. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Matà is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname23 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Mata, Mâţă, Maťa, Māta, Måtä

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Matà is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Catalan, third-person singular preterite indicative of matar

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Scottish Gaelic, alternative form of ma-thà

    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.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Matà under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Matà mean, and where does it come from?
From Old Galician-Portuguese mata, possibly from Late Latin matta (“reed mat”). Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and Dictionary of American Family Names and 8 other sources.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Matà?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 510 thousand people named Mota, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Mexico, United States, Venezuela and Philippines; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Matà most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Matà is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 308 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Matà?
In the United States, the national register counted 48,120 people named Matà in 2010, about 1 in 6.9 thousand residents.
How common is Matà compared with other names?
In Brazil, Matà is the 212th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Matà?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mat%C3%A0

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

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, “Matà” — ranked 89th in Brazil (IBGE). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Matà parses inside a full name →