A variant of Matthew, from the Hebrew name Mattityahu, meaning "gift of God."
Mattheus is the Latin, Dutch, and Low German form of Matthew, carrying the name back toward its earliest documented shape before English wore it smooth. The name's ultimate origin is the Hebrew Mattityahu — a compound of mattan, meaning "gift," and Yah, the shortened divine name — yielding the meaning "gift of God." It passed through Aramaic as Mattai, into Greek as Matthaios, and into Latin ecclesiastical usage as Matthaeus, the form that seeded Mattheus across northern Europe.
In the New Testament, Matthew the Apostle — a tax collector called to discipleship, traditionally credited with the first Gospel — made the name one of the most widely distributed in Christendom. The Latin Matthaeus became Matthew in English, Matthieu in French, Mateo in Spanish, Matteo in Italian, and Mattheus in the Netherlands and German-speaking regions. The Dutch painter Matthaeus Merian, the sixteenth-century Flemish painter Mattheus Cock, and numerous German ecclesiastical figures bore the name during its centuries of dominance in northern European naming culture.
Today Mattheus feels simultaneously classical and continental — it is the name as a scholar or a monk might have written it, before centuries of vernacular compression. For English-speaking parents, it offers a way to honor the Matthew tradition while adding unexpected depth and visual distinction. In the Netherlands and Germany it remains in quiet regular use, never fashionable enough to seem trendy, never rare enough to seem recherché — an honest, sturdy name whose Latin vowels carry the weight of two thousand years of European Christian culture.