Matelot
surname · Latin script
Meaning: seaman
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Matelot is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 152K(inferred from the name graph)
- MUMauritius≈1 in 15K
- CMCameroon≈1 in 699K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 135 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
≈450 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Mauritius, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
seaman
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Matelot 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.
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Matelot is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A sailor.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nrm, sailor
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, MATELÓT, mateloți, s. m. Marinar.
as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Gilbert Matelotb. 1955FRFrench politician
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(measured from records)
Attested in 3 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 68 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 59 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 55 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 52 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 49 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 47 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 44 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 37 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 34 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 33 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 25 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #105,784 |
Reference works 1
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Matelot mean, and where does it come from?
- seaman Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Matelot have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 445 people named Matelot in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled matelot.
- How common is the name Matelot?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 5 people named Matelot in 2008, about 1 in 2.3 million residents.
- How common is Matelot compared with other names?
- In Mauritius, Matelot is the 891st most common surname of 1,496 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Matelot?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/matelotThe 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, “Matelot” — the 891st most common surname in Mauritius. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.