Why many parents in Britain are naming their sons “Mohammed”

Parenting website, babycentre.co.uk, recently released a list of 100 top baby names in 2014 in Britain, and the name, “Mohammed” topped the list of boy names while Sophia topped that of girl names.

The website recorded the baby names from more than 50,000 new parents of 2014.

The name, which is that of the Muslim Prophet means “praised” or “praiser of God” and is thought to be one of the most popular names worldwide. On babycentre’s list, it went up 27 places from last year’s ranking.

Note that the website treated different spellings of the name as one – “Muhammad”, “Mohammed” and “Mohammad”.

Now, analysts are now beginning to wonder if Britain is gradually turning into a Muslim country, judging from the fact that new names that joined the top 100 list include: “Omar”, “Ali” and “Ibrahim” while “Nur” and “Maryam” did it for the girl names.

Sarah Redshaw, managing editor for the Baby Centre, according to Independent UK said: “With the increase of Arabic names plus Aarav, an Indian boys' name, the top 100 shows the ever-increasing diversity of the UK today”.

But why is “Mohammed” (and its variant names) so popular? Channel4.com's FactCheck thinks that “while the world’s Muslims have many good qualities, being imaginative about boys’ names isn’t one of them”

FactCheck quoted Professor David Voas, an expert in population studies from the University of Essex, as saying:

“The story basically is that 2 per cent of baby boys are now called Mohammed. The reason for that is that there is relatively little variation in Muslim names, as opposed to non-Muslim names.

“A higher proportion of Muslims give their male children the name Muhammad, in one variation or another. For non-Muslims, there is a huge range of everything.”

“Although the proportion of infants who are born into Muslim families is now something like 9 or 10 per cent – a figure that is either high or low depending on how you see these things – a fairly significant proportion of those get given the name Mohammed.”

Britain’s Muslim population has grown tremendously in recent years and many believe that it will continue to rise, owing to higher birth rates among immigrants from Muslim countries, and the fact that the British population tends to be younger, with more women of child-bearing age.

Professor Voas also said: “Birth rates have been higher amongst immigrants generally, and perhaps Muslims particularly…the Muslim birth rates converge fairly quickly to the national norms.”

According to the Channel4 FactCheck,

His prediction is that the British Muslim community could eventually grow to make up around 10 per cent of the population, but predictions of much higher percentages are “a bit bonkers”.

However, predictions like this depend on forecasts of migration from Muslim countries. Very high net migration could change the demographics.

The last time we FactChecked this topic, readers asked about rates at which non-Muslims are converting to Islam, and how much that is likely to swell the future Muslim population.

The best research we can find on converts is this – a study based on census data, phone calls to mosques and an online survey. It found that there may have been as many as 100,000 Muslim converts living in the UK in 2010, but people were only converting at a rate of about 5,000 a year.

Below is the list of the top 50 boy and girl names for 2014 according to babycentre.co.uk

The Top 50 boys' names