Matheson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: patronymic from a short form of Matthew
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mæθəsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Matheson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 8.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 9K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 9.1K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 380 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈60,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
patronymic from a short form of Matthew.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Matheson 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈60,000 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Matheson | 6 |
| US United States | — | 7,585 | 1 in 44K | 7.6K | Matheson | 380 |
| CA Canada | #786 | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 9K | — | Matheson | 192 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Matheson | 190 |
| AU Australia | #865 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | 2 | Matheson | 172 |
| NZ New Zealand | #566 | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | — | Matheson | 88 |
| GY Guyana | #619 | 134 | 1 in 5.6K | 134 | Matheson | 3 |
| GD Grenada | — | 45 | 1 in 2.5K | 45 | — | 2 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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)
Matheson 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 surname originating as a patronymic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, son of Matthew.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Scott M.. US lawyer, politician
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- James Mathesonb. 1796GBBritish politician and merchant (1796-1878)
- Richard Mathesonb. 1926USAmerican fiction writer (1926–2013)
- Scott M. Mathesonb. 1929US12th Governor of Utah (1929-1990)
- Tim Mathesonb. 1947USAmerican actor
- Hugh Mathesonb. 1949GBBritish rower (born 1949)
- Richard Christian Mathesonb. 1953USAmerican writer and screenwriter
- Chris Mathesonb. 1960USAmerican film director and screenwriter
- Hans Mathesonb. 1975GBBritish actor
- Diana Mathesonb. 1984CACanadian soccer player
- Dom Dollab. 1992AUnot in their usual nameAustralian house music producer
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 32 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.6K | #4,678 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.3K | #4,468 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.2K | #4,770 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 134 | #491 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 45 | #178 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Matheson mean, and where does it come from?
- patronymic from a short form of Matthew. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Matheson?
- A machine transcription gives /mæθəsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Matheson have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 60 thousand people named Matheson in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled matheson.
- Where is Matheson most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Matheson is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 2.5 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Matheson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,585 people named Matheson in 2010, about 1 in 44 thousand residents.
- How common is Matheson compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Matheson is the 566th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Matheson?
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/mathesonThe 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, “Matheson” — the 566th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.