Tracing the Mattes Family Name

Spelling was not fixed until the modern era, so Matthes could easily become Mattes. The name is usually explained as “Gift of God”.

Heraldry and the Mattes name

A coat of arms belongs to a particular family line rather than to everyone named Mattes, so the heraldry linked to Matthes is a starting point, not an automatic right.

Spelling and variants

Mattes drops the “h” of Matthes, a shortening that clerks often made. Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them.

According to the 2010 US Census, the Mattes surname had 3,007 bearers. That is enough to place it in the top 25,000 American surnames. French birth records list 197 children named Mattes between 1891 and 2000. Want more than a summary? See the Mattes family name pack.