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Monet vs Monica

American parents have registered 252,257 Monicas since 1880, against 4,552 Monets. Monica is still ahead, with 371 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Monet against Monica, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Monet Monica

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

Monica 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 Monet had 48 and Monica had 386.

Side by side

  Monet Monica
Total US births 4,552252,257
Most in one year 1756,619
Babies in 2025 40371
Estimated living today 4,400229,000
Median age today 2846
Peak year 19971979
Best rank 1,074th girls40th girls
Rank in 2025 3,712th736th
First recorded 19521880
Girls / boys 4,546 / 6251,274 / 983

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 Monicas alive today are over 46; half the Monets are over 28. That is 18 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 Monet Monica
England and Wales 2881,629

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: Monet and Monica.