Montreal ( ( listen); French: [mɔ̃ʁeal] ( listen); officially Montréal) is the most populous municipality in the Canadian province of Quebec and the second -most populous municipality in Canada as a whole. Originally called Ville-Marie, or " City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. It has a distinct four - season continental climate with warm to hot summers and cold, snowy winters.
In 2016 the city had a population of 1,704,694. Montreal's metropolitan area had a population of 4,098,927 and a population of 1,942,044 in the urban agglomeration, with all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal included. French is the city 's official language and is the language spoken at home by 49.8% of the population of the city, followed by English at 22.8% and 18.3% other languages (in the 2016 census, not including multi- language responses). In the larger Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, 65.8% of the population speaks Canadian French at home, compared to 15.3% who speak English. The agglomeration Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada, with over 59% of the population able to speak both English and French. Montreal is the second -largest primarily French-speaking city in the world, after Paris.
