Humanverse

Monalisa vs Monty

American parents have registered 15,629 Montys since 1880, against 1,116 Monalisas. Monty is still ahead, with 112 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Monalisa against Monty, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Monalisa Monty

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

Monty has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1900 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2002, when Monalisa had 15 and Monty had 29.

Side by side

  Monalisa Monty
Total US births 1,11615,629
Most in one year 37551
Babies in 2025 under 5112
Estimated living today 1,00011,000
Median age today 4660
Peak year 19651961
Best rank 1,887th girls339th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,539th
First recorded 19501900
Girls / boys 1,116 / 0279 / 15,350

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 Montys alive today are over 60; half the Monalisas are over 46. That is 14 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 Monalisa Monty
England and Wales 373,049

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: Monalisa and Monty.