Naturally, no one would be responsible for their parents’ choice of a name. Nor would they all be likely to emulate the men after whom they were named. But it would probably be reasonable to assume that the choice of names might be telling you something about whom large numbers of people in your country identify with. At least it would seem a question worth discussing.
If we were confident about most of the people involved going overwhelmingly the proud to-be-British way, then we would discuss it. But we aren’t, so we don’t.
Last week the news arrived that the most popular name given to boys in the UK in 2014 was “Mohammed.” The reactions and non-reactions to this story betrayed the deep unease and denial that are now part of the debate around Islam in modern Britain.
We have of course been here before. For some years now, there have been stories of “Mohammed” creeping up the list of most popular names in the UK. And each time the reaction has been similar.
First there come doubts over the sources of such stories, whether informal contributions from, for instance, new mothers’ websites, or official statistics. There is also now extensive discussion about the varied possible spellings of the name (Muhammad and Mohammad for instance). Each year this leads to a fruitful and interesting debate about whether the reason why this name has come so high up the list of most popular boy’s names is because all the different variants of the spelling have been clumped together or whether the name is lower down than it would be because they have been kept apart. This is a now traditional annual debate in Britain.
This year, the story came out with an added twist: whichever way you cooked it, it looked as if “Mohammed” had come out on top. This seemed to be the case with the Office for National Statistics official figures for England and Wales and this latest one, from the “Baby Centre.” It was the latter that garnered a particular amount of attention. In the war between “Oliver” and “Mohammed” to reach the top spot, this poll came to the conclusion that if you put “Muhammad,” “Mohammed” and “Mohammad” together, the variations brought the name to the top by a considerable margin.
