Humanverse

Mona vs Montague

American parents have registered 45,818 Monas since 1880, against 382 Montagues. Mona is still ahead, with 61 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mona against Montague, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mona Montague

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Mona has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Mona had 91 and Montague had 7.

Side by side

  Mona Montague
Total US births 45,818382
Most in one year 1,23114
Babies in 2025 61under 5
Estimated living today 29,000220
Median age today 6448
Peak year 19571915
Best rank 242nd girls1,968th boys
Rank in 2025 2,778thunranked
First recorded 18801915
Girls / boys 45,787 / 310 / 382

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Monas alive today are over 64; half the Montagues are over 48. That is 16 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Mona Montague
England and Wales 428647

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Mona and Montague.