by Neil Murphy and Gillian Duncan, The National
Name with roots in Islam and the Middle East has a surprisingly long history in Britain
Muhammad has officially taken the top spot in England as the most popular baby boys’ name for the first time.
The UK’s statistics agency, the ONS, revealed there there were 4,177 boys named Muhammad registered in 2023. Noah, 2022’s most popular boys’ name, came in second, while Oliver was third.
So, what is behind the name’s rise in Britain?
Historical factors
Britain’s Muslim population stands at nearly four million, or about six per cent of the UK as a whole. While the name’s popularity is clearly linked to inward migration, its history on the official UK register goes back more than a century.
Mohammed, spelt with an o, first appeared in the top 100 in the 1920s, when it ranked as the 91st most popular name for baby boys. It has featured in the top 100 most popular names for baby boys every decade since.
Britain first experienced a significant influx of Muslim immigrants in the late 1800s, particularly in the port cities such as London, Cardiff and Liverpool. Many of these arrivals were from Yemen and Egypt, although their numbers remained in the thousands.
“There were Muslim seamen in Britain in the 19th century and into the 20th, with little enclaves dotted around various coastal towns,” David Coleman, a University of Oxford professor who specialises in the demographic consequences of migration and the demography of ethnic minorities, told The National.
But for decades their numbers remained tiny, when “all kinds of curious episodes” led to migration to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, said Prof Coleman. They included the creation of the Mangla Dam in the Mirpur district of Pakistan, which diverted water, forcing around 100,000 people to leave. Thousands moved to the UK at the time. To this day, around two thirds of Britain’s Pakistani community, which is about one million people, have roots in the Mirpur region.