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Mona vs Montana

American parents have registered 45,818 Monas since 1880, against 12,855 Montanas. But in 2025 it was Montana that was commoner, 356 babies to 61.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mona Montana

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Mona for 109 years and Montana for 37 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mona Montana
Total US births 45,81812,855
Most in one year 1,231678
Babies in 2025 61356
Estimated living today 29,00012,000
Median age today 6424
Peak year 19571998
Best rank 242nd girls510th girls
Rank in 2025 2,778th1,033rd
First recorded 18801910
Girls / boys 45,787 / 318,815 / 4,040

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 Montanas are over 24. That is 40 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Mona Montana
France 6,84035
England and Wales 428520
Ireland 10621
Scotland 129

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 Montana.