Muhammad is the most common boy’s name in England and Wales – and has been for over a decade, analysis suggests.
Government statisticians last month crowned Noah top of the charts for a second consecutive year, with 4,586 boys born in 2022 given the name popularised by Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp.
However, 7,362 boys – or one in every 42 – were given the name Muhammad or one of four separate iterations ubiquitous in Islamic culture.
Thirty-seven different spellings were registered by the Office for National Statistics.
Muhammad (4,177), the most common, has seen a nine-fold rise in popularity since modern records began in the mid-90s.
Mohammed (1,694), meanwhile, has halved in prevalence since peaking in the late noughties.
Dr Rebecca Gregory, assistant professor in historical linguistics and onomastics at the University of Nottingham, says the disparity is as much geographical and cultural as it is random.
‘Muhammad is the most common spelling because it is a transliteration of Arabic into the English language’s Roman alphabet,’ she told .
Such a spelling is largely found in the regions of North Africa and the Middle East.
Dr Gregory adds that Mohammed, which used to be the most popular, comes from South Asian languages found in countries such as Pakistan but the change in why one has overtaken the other is harder to identify.
‘With lots of recordings of a particular name, people try and standardise it,’ she said.
‘Some of what the data show is people intentionally using what they see as a more standard spelling so their children don’t run the risk of their name being mis-pronounced or spelled.
‘It could also be to do with a specific cultural background or to some extent a preference of the person doing the name recording.
‘If a parent doesn’t have a preference on the spelling of Muhammad, the person taking the recording might just choose one.’
ONS statistics also show that 2024 is the one hundredth anniversary of Mohammed entering the top 100 boys’ names for England and Wales, debuting at 91st in 1924.
Its prevalence dropped considerably in the lead up to and during WW2 but began to rise in the 1960s.
That particular iteration of the name was the only one to appear in the ONS’ top 100 data from 1924 until Mohammad joined in the early 1980s.
Muhammad, now the most popular of the three, first broke into the top 100 in the mid-1980s and has seen the fastest growth of all three iterations since.
While there is no definitive answer pointing to the popularity of the name, increasing sizes of Muslim communities across the UK and popularity of sporting figures such as Mohamed (Mo) Farah, Mohamed Salah and Muhammad Ali are likely to play their part.
A spokesperson for the ONS said that the body ‘only provides statistics based on the exact spelling and do not group names, as some groupings are subjective and not straightforward.’
They added that the statistics reflect an assumption that parents make a deliberate choice over the spelling and naming their child in a certain way, for example Oliver, Oliver or Olly.
If multiple spelling were grouped under one umbrella name, Theodore (8th in 2022, 2,835) and Theo (9th in 2022, 2,808) would also be above Noah.
This is an example of so-called hypocoristic naming – giving a shortened first name as the given name.
Sophie, Sophia and Sofia would also soar to the top of the charts, toppling Olivia in the girls’ rankings.
When counting this way, however, found Muhammad has been the most common name since 2011.
Just 3,495 boys were named after the founder of Islam in 1996, ONS data shows. This had doubled by 2007, reflecting the surge in the UK’s Muslim community.
In terms of crude numbers, the name peaked in 2013 (8,333).
Yet it makes up a bigger share of boys now (2.37 per cent) than ever before because of plunging birth rates – partly fuelled by women choosing to focus on their careers and couples waiting to have children until later in life.
Data shows just 310,000 boys were born in 2022, compared to almost 375,000 one decade earlier.
Muhammad, or the other spelling of Mohammed, was the most common boys’ name in 50 of 300-plus authorities in 2022, analysis also found.
It trailed Noah (75) but beat George (46) and Arthur (43).
However the data do not represent where Muhammad, and its other iterations, is used as an honorific first name but not the actual name used in day-to-day life. Or indeed for shortened versions of the name, such as Mo Salah and Mo Farah.
‘We can see a difference between official names and those used in the world and that is something very tricky seen in the statistics,’ Dr Gregory added.
‘This could misrepresent how the names are used in practice.’
Traditionally-popular names have largely fallen out of favour, the analysis also shows.
For example, Lauren, fifth in 1996, ranked 857th in 2022, with just 41 girls given that name.
Matthew and Ryan, meanwhile, are now ranked 118 and 116, respectively, despite being in the top 10 when modern records began.
The trend likely shows that people are falling out of love with giving children names that you grew up around, Dr Gregory said, rather than a move away from ‘traditional’ naming.
‘Names like Lauren, Matthew and Ryan are a clear example of how names skip generations – you might not name your child after people your age or your mum’s age but maybe that of your grandmother’s age,’ she said.
When it comes to girls’ names overall in 2022, Olivia (3,289) was the most popular in England and Wales for the seventh year in a row.
After Olivia came Amelia (2,884), Isla (2,613), Ava (2,293) and Ava (2,293).
All carry the same ‘schwa’ or unstressed vowel at the end, a style more popular with Irish and Scottish names over English names, Dr Gregory explained.
‘They are names people are increasingly associating with girls and femininity so people are pulling away from the tradition,’ she said.
With regards to boys, after Noah and Muhammad in the official ONS rankings came George (3,699), Oliver (3,691) and Leo (3,610).