When the town was first settled by Slavs it was known as Kutlovitsa; later in Ottoman Turkish as Kutlofça. The town was renamed Ferdinand in 1890, receiving the benevolence of Bulgarian "Knyaz" Ferdinand and town status. On 1 March 1945, by a decree of the government, the communist authorities changed the town's name to Mihaylovgrad after the Communist Party activist Hristo Mihaylov (died 1944), a leader of the 1923 September Uprising in the region. In 1993, after a presidential decree, the town received the name Montana, inspired by the name of the nearby Roman settlement, setting up a military camp, Castra ad Montanesium, on top of existing Thracian settlement.