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Montague vs Monty

American parents have registered 15,629 Montys since 1880, against 382 Montagues. Monty is still ahead, with 112 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Montague 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

Of the 115 years in which either name was published, Monty for 113 years and Montague for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Montague Monty
Total US births 38215,629
Most in one year 14551
Babies in 2025 under 5112
Estimated living today 22011,000
Median age today 4860
Peak year 19151961
Best rank 1,968th boys339th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,539th
First recorded 19151900
Girls / boys 0 / 382279 / 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 Montagues are over 48. That is 12 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 Montague Monty
England and Wales 6473,049

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: Montague and Monty.