Mato
loc · Latin script
Meaning: widespread habitational name from any of numerous places in Galicia and Portugal named Mato, from mata ‘brushwood’, ‘scrub’, ‘thicket’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/matu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mato is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Croatia than in any other country.
- HRCroatia1 in 386(measured from records)
- SISlovenia1 in 13K
- ATAustria≈1 in 20K
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.
- Croatia (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 81 (measured from records)
- 1 in 386 (inferred from the name graph)
10,941 people, 2021
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Croatia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
widespread habitational name from any of numerous places in Galicia and Portugal named Mato, from mata ‘brushwood’, ‘scrub’, ‘thicket’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mato 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HR Croatia | 10,941 | 1 in 386 | 11K | — | 81 |
| AT Austria | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 20K | 22 | — | — |
| US United States | 318 | 1 in 1M | 790 | — | 66 |
| UG Uganda | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 171K | 1 | — | 1 |
| SI Slovenia | 162 | 1 in 13K | 162 | — | 6 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 55K | 95 | — | 14 |
| AL Albania | 35 | 1 in 88K | 35 | — | 23 |
10,941 people counted by DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form), 2021. 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: DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SURS — resident population given names; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Mato is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
metonymic occupational name for a dairyman, from a word meaning ‘cream’; ‘curds’, ‘curd cheese’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from a pet form of the personal name Mate, Hungarian form of Matthew.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Portuguese, thicket, brush, weeds
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
In Portuguese, forest; bush; jungle; woods (uncultivated area covered in wild plants)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
topographic name from mato ‘scrub’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
- Mato Kosykb. 1853USSorbian poet (1853–1940)
- Clorinda Matto de Turnerb. 1854PEnot in their usual namePeruvian writer, thinker, politician, journalist, and translator (1854–1909)
- Mato Dukovacb. 1918RSCroatian World War II fighter pilot (1918–1990)
- Mato Valtonenb. 1955FIFinnish musician and actor
- Ana Matob. 1959ESSpanish politician
- Fito Cabralesb. 1966ESnot in their usual nameSpanish musician
- Mato Neretljakb. 1979HRCroatian footballer (born 1979)
- Mato Jajalob. 1988HRBosnian association football player
- Joselub. 1990DEnot in their usual nameSpanish association football player
- Mato KautaJPJapanese mangaka
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 55 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 790 | #31,403 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 720 | #32,031 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 656 | #32,939 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 95 | #11,529 |
| UG Uganda | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #298 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Mato mean, and where does it come from?
- widespread habitational name from any of numerous places in Galicia and Portugal named Mato, from mata ‘brushwood’, ‘scrub’, ‘thicket’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Mato?
- A machine transcription gives /matu/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
- In which country does Mato have the most bearers?
- In Croatia, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Mato, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Mato most common?
- Mato is densest in Croatia, where the national register counts about 1 in 386 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Mato?
- In Croatia, the national register counted 10,941 people named Mato in 2021, about 1 in 386 residents.
What do you want to know about Mato?
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/matoThe 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, “Mato”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.