SpanishMexican3 syllables
Meaning: the gift of Yahweh.
Matías
Matthew and Matthias started as one Hebrew name and finished as two different apostles. Spanish is one of the few languages that still hands out both.
| Origin | Spanish form of Matthias, from Greek Matthías, a shortening of the Hebrew Mattityahu |
|---|---|
| Meaning | The gift of Yahweh, from mattath (gift) + Yah, the short form of the divine name |
| Pronunciation | mah-TEE-ahs, three syllables. The written accent is doing real work: without it the i and the a would collapse into one syllable and the stress would move |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100; heavily used across Spanish-speaking South America since the 1990s and now common in Mexico |
| Variants | Matthias, Mathias, Mattia (Italian), Mattias (Swedish), Matyáš (Czech), Maciej (Polish) |
| Nicknames | Mati, Matu |
| Not the same as | Mateo and Matteo, which are Matthew — the other Greek clipping of the same Hebrew name, attached to a different man |
History & meaning
Mattityahu was so common in Second Temple Judaism that Greek speakers wore it down in more than one direction, and the two results ended up belonging to two people. The most famous bearer of the Hebrew original is not an apostle at all: Mattathias, the priest of Modein who refused to sacrifice at the Greek altar and set off the Maccabean revolt in 167 BC, and whose sons finished it — the events behind Hanukkah. The apostle came two centuries later. Acts 1 has the eleven casting lots between Joseph called Barsabbas and Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot, and the lot falls on Matthias. The full account of how the two Greek forms were sorted between the two men is set out on the Mattia page; the short version is that Spanish, like Italian, kept the pair separate and never let one absorb the other.
For most of the modern era Mateo did nearly all of the work in Spanish and Matías was the quieter cousin. That reversed within living memory. Since the 1990s Matías has been one of the standard boys' names of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, given in enormous numbers to a generation now grown up, and the taste moved north; in Mexico it now sits comfortably beside Santiago, Mateo and Emiliano. Keep the accent if you can. In Spanish the tilde is not decoration, it is the instruction that separates ma-TÍ-as from a two-syllable mash, and it works exactly the way it does in Raúl.
Why parents choose it
It manages to sound current without having been invented in the last twenty years, which is a narrow gap for a name to fit through. It also delivers Mati, one of the warmest short forms Spanish has. In the United States expect the accent to disappear on official paperwork and expect nobody to mispronounce the rest of it.
Middle names for Matías
The stress sits in the middle and the name ends on a soft -s, so a partner with a strong opening syllable steadies the whole thing: Matías Gabriel, Matías Tomás, Matías Joaquín, Matías Ignacio. The middle names guide explains how to test a pairing aloud.
Famous Matíases
Matías Almeyda captained Argentina's midfield in the 1990s and then managed Chivas de Guadalajara to the CONCACAF Champions League title in 2018. Matías Vecino has spent his career in Italy with Inter Milan and Lazio while playing for Uruguay. In Spain the name belongs to a newsreading dynasty: Matías Prats Cañete was the voice of Spanish radio and television sport for decades, and his son Matías Prats Chacón has anchored the evening news for most of the current century.
Consider instead
Mateo is the one to take if it is really Matthew you are after, and it is the commoner of the pair in Mexico by a wide margin. Mattia is the same apostle in Italian, three syllables with a held double t. Elías gives you another accented Spanish name out of scripture with the same light three-beat shape. Browse the rest of the M names.