From Norman French 'mont aigu' meaning 'pointed hill;' famously a family name in Romeo and Juliet.
Montague arrives in English from the Norman French place name Montaigu, itself built from the Old French elements mont (mountain) and aigu (sharp, pointed), describing the jagged hill-forts that dotted the Norman landscape after 1066. The name crossed the Channel with the Conquest and took root as both a baronial surname and, eventually, a given name among families who prized their continental heritage. Its aristocratic pedigree was well established long before Shakespeare immortalized it.
For most of the world, Montague is inseparable from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595), where the Montagues and Capulets wage their ruinous feud through Verona's streets. Romeo Montague lent the surname a romanticism that clung to it for centuries — passionate, noble, and faintly doomed.
The name also graced real historical figures, including the English admiral Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, whose taste for a particular lunchtime snack earned him a different kind of immortality. As a given name, Montague enjoyed quiet Victorian favor, when surname-style first names were fashionable among the English gentry. The nickname Monty softened it for everyday use, giving the name both gravitas and approachability.
Today Montague sits in the rare-and-distinguished tier — uncommon enough to feel distinctive, yet rooted in enough literary and historical soil that it never sounds invented. It carries the scent of old libraries and Shakespeare folios, a name for a child whose parents believe a name should have stories inside it.