Humanverse

Montana

The girl's name Montana has been in the national records since 1910, with 12,855 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,033rd. About 12,000 Montanas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 24.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Montana boys named Montana

Girls and boys called Montana

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Montana crossed from boys to girls in 1986, and has stayed there for 40 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 82% girls, and in 2025 it was 68%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 44 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births
12,855
Estimated living today
12,000
Median age today
24
Peak year
1998
Best rank
510th
Rank in 2025
1,033rd
First recorded
1910
Girls / boys
8,815 / 4,040

How old the living Montanas are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 12,855 babies given the name since 1910, about 12,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 3,900 of them are children and 30 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin a place name

From Latin montāna.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Montanas

People named Montana with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Montana is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Montana is most concentrated in Montana (3.4×), Oklahoma (3.1×), Missouri (1.9×), Tennessee (1.7×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1998

The most popular girls’ names the year Montana peaked:

All the names of 1998

Montana elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Montana 492 717th
France girls Montana 30 5,513th
England and Wales boys Montana 28 3,079th
Ireland girls Montana 21 752nd
Scotland girls Montana 9 629th
France boys Montana 5 4,363rd

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Montana among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Country Spelling First forename Any forename
Finland girls Montana 6
Finland boys Montana 6

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Montana lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 449 women called Montaña were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Province Spelling People Per thousand Place there
Cáceres Montaña 246 1.255 168
Cádiz Montaña 57 0.089 653
Badajoz Montaña 16 0.047 906
Salamanca Montaña 7 0.041 1,132
Sevilla Montaña 37 0.037 1,048
Córdoba Montaña 11 0.028 1,117

Listed in 7 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 45 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

Montana against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Montana with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.