Thirding the notion that it's definitely not "mat" in the US. A mat is something you put on the ground, Matt is my cousin's ex-fiance, and matte is a surface finish with little to no shine.
Really don't know what people say English is hard to learn, we use the same word for so many things that there's fewer words to learn /s
From the UK. I've never seen matte spelled as matt. CA, UK and AU are generally pretty close with spelling, whereas the US is usually off doing its own thing. It's a similar thing to blonde and blond.
Now I'm not saying anything, but I dated a Matt, and he did produce a lot of paste... I'd have to run the numbers to see if it's viable for mass-production though.
And I’ve seen all 3 in use in the USA. It’s not matte = Canada. I’ve seen matte more than mat which is historically the spelling. The oed doesn’t list matt as the proper spelling but who knows with the brits.
Chamber's dictionary has it as "Mat, or Matt, or matte" stating that it comes from the French "mat" or the German "matt", so fuck knows where matte comes from!
The American spelling "matte" probably comes from the spelling "mate" derived from French "mate", and doubling the "t" to differentiate it from "mate". The British spelling "matt" was probably primarily influenced by the German word "Matt" considering the UK tended to have more German influence.
Alternatively, either (or both) may be an etymological spelling from Latin "mattus" (which means "drunk" but likely became a word for "pale" in French).
While I am a linguist, I only deduced this from a bit of Googling and a lot of speculating, so don't take my word for it...