Names of Montenegro ME

MONSTAT — census names records Софија as the commonest given name in Montenegro and Поповиц as the commonest surname; the names that most distinguish Montenegro from the rest of the world are Bulatović, Milica and Vujović.

Written in Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian, Croatian.

Population
610K
Official registers
2
Name forms recorded
2.2K
ABuilt from 2 official registers (2021), 2,203 name forms in our corpus, 10 cited works.

Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Montenegro are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Montenegro included.

How names work in Montenegro

2 naming traditions are in use in Montenegro, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Montenegro

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 2
MONSTAT — census names, 2021 — 10 given names counted over residents, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Софија——
2Дунја——
3Маса——
4Сара——
5Теодора——
6Ксенија——
7Мила——
8Богдана——
9Хелена——
10Јана——

Where the two lists disagree

10 of MONSTAT — census names's top 10 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

MONSTAT — census names 2021Across all recordsсофија: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. софијаnot rankedдунја: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. дунјаnot rankedмаса: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. масаnot rankedсара: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. сараnot rankedтеодора: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. теодораnot rankedксенија: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. ксенијаnot rankedмила: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. милаnot rankedбогдана: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. богданаnot rankedхелена: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. хеленаnot rankedјана: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. јанаnot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
MONSTAT — census names, 2021 on the left; every record we hold for Montenegro on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Montenegro

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Montenegro holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

MilicaJovanaDraganZoranPredragDejanGoranBojanaDraganaŽeljkoNemanjaSanjaDarkoVesnaBiljanaBojanNebojšaMiodragAndrijaVeselinAnđelaLjiljanaTijanaDušanSašaBrankoVladanRadovanSrđanMladenRankoSlobodanMirjanaĐorđeMirkoBožidarNenadBrankaGordana
Sized by how much of the difference between Montenegro's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Scripts & spelling

Bargiven name●
Milicagiven name●
Popovićsurname●
Southsurname●
Dragangiven name●
The best-attested names in Montenegro, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

The Latin alphabet here is not the ASCII one. Stripping diacritics merges names that are not the same name and changes how they are pronounced, and a record that has been ASCII-folded has lost information no amount of guessing recovers.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • MONSTAT — census names2021headline

    Statistical Office of Montenegro (MONSTAT). Counts: residents. given and surname. 10 forms. 1946–2021.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-backfilled registry stub (2026-06-05); verify publisher/URL. 350 rows, name_types=['given', 'surname'], evidence=['rank']. source note: monstat_census2023_age_group

    Last verified 2026-06-05.

  • Statistical Office of Montenegro (MONSTAT)2023

    Statistical Office of Montenegro (MONSTAT). Counts: not recorded. given and surname. 55 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    MONSTAT published a 2023 Census report 'The most frequent names of the inhabitants of Montenegro by age and gender' with top-10 male/female names across age groups. Publication at monstat.org/eng/novosti.php?id=4029 (Excel/PDF). Coverage is census-based snapshot, not annual newborn counts. No per-year birth name frequency dataset available. NO LIVE PER-NAME SEARCH FORM FOUND (2026-08-06): MONSTAT (monstat.org) has no interactive name-search tool, only the static 2023 census PDF/report already cataloged; popis2023.monstat.org is a citizen self-verification tool for one's own census form, not a name search. Montenegro's voter-roll check (biraci.me, gov.me/e-servis/provjera-podataka-o-biracu) looks up a person by ID/passport number to find their polling station — a per-person PII lookup, catalog-only, not built.

    Last verified 2026-05-10.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Montenegro?
Софија, according to MONSTAT — census names (2021) among girls.
What is the most common surname in Montenegro?
Поповиц, according to MONSTAT — census names.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Montenegro?
Because they count different people. MONSTAT — census names (2021) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Софија. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Milica. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Montenegro?
No — 2 are described on this page (Serbo-Croatian, Albanian), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Montenegro”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/ME (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from MONSTAT — census names.