Mattisyahu is a Hebrew form of Mattithyahu, meaning gift of God.
Mattisyahu (מַתִּתְיָהוּ) is the original Hebrew form behind the English Matthew, meaning 'gift of God' — from 'mattan' (gift) combined with the divine name 'Yahu' (a shortened form of YHWH). The name appears throughout the Hebrew Bible and has one of the most extraordinary trans-historical arcs of any name in Western civilization: from ancient Israelite usage, through the Maccabean period (Mattisyahu was the father of Judah Maccabee, the warrior-priest who led the revolt commemorated by Hanukkah), through its Greek transformation as Matthaios, its Latin rendering as Matthaeus, and eventually the hundreds of vernacular forms used worldwide today.
As a given name Mattisyahu is used in Orthodox and traditional Jewish communities where the full Hebrew form is preferred over the anglicized Matthew — particularly among Ashkenazi Jews who see the restored Hebrew as an act of cultural and religious integrity. The name gained unexpected global recognition through the Hasidic reggae musician Matisyahu (born Matthew Paul Miller), whose career in the 2000s introduced the name to audiences entirely outside the Jewish world and gave it an association with spiritual seeking, genre-defying artistry, and the power of religious identity worn openly. For parents choosing Mattisyahu today the name is both an anchor and a declaration — it reaches back to one of Judaism's defining moments of resistance and forward into a contemporary landscape where Hebrew names are chosen not by default but by intention. It is long, formal, and demanding of full pronunciation, which gives it a gravitas that shorter derivatives cannot quite replicate.