With apologies to his Royal Highness, the most popular boy’s name isn’t Harry – in spite of what you will have read in the papers this week. It’s Mohammed, under various spellings. The Guardian hasn’t even worked this out, in spite of its pretty data table. Table 6 on the ONS results shows: some 8,018 baby Mohammeds came kicking and screaming into the world last year, well clear of Harry (7,523) and Oliver (7,007) Harry had his turn, and John was the most popular name for decades. We are now living in the age of Mohammed, a name that has been growing (on average) for 5 per cent a year. Here’s the trajectory.
Does this matter? Not to me. Muslims are about 5 per cent of the UK population, they tend to have larger families and tend not to call their kids names like Xeus and Conan.
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