Mona vs Monica

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Mona 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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Monica for 82 years and Mona for 64 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1880–1900 Mona ahead
• 1901 Monica ahead
• 1902–1915 Mona ahead
• 1916 Monica ahead
• 1917–1944 Mona ahead
• 1945–1949 Monica ahead
• 1950 Mona ahead
• 1951–2025 Monica ahead

Side by side

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 Monicas are over 46. That is 18 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Mona Louisiana (2.8×), Maine (2.3×), Hawaii (2.1×)
• Monica New Mexico (2.3×), California (1.8×), the District of Columbia (1.7×)

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.

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

• Mona vs Monique
• Mona vs Monroe
• Mona vs Monte
• Mona vs Monty
• Mona vs Montana
• Monica vs Monique
• Monica vs Monroe
• Monica vs Monte