A new count of the population of Norway’s capital city Oslo has revealed that Mohammad, the name of Islam’s Prophet, is the most common name for the first time ever in the European capital’s history.
“It is very exciting,” Jørgen Ouren of Statistics Norway (Statistisk Sentralbyrå – SSB) told NRK, the Local.no reported on Thursday, August 28.
The survey was made by SSB for the male names in Oslo.
The results found that 4,801 boys and men are named Mohammed or variations of Mohammed as their first name.
Therefore, Mohammed has passed both Jan (4,667) and Per (4,155).
The name has spent four years in a row at the top of the list of baby names in Oslo, but this is the first time that Mohammed tops the men’s name list for Oslo.
Similar results were revealed in Britain after statistics found that the name Mohammad, or its variations, has topped the list of the baby names.
The estimates showed that the Muslim name was the most multi-cultural London and the West Midlands, while Oliver came out top in the South East, South West and Wales.
Norwegian Muslims are estimated at 150,000 out of the country’s 4.5 million population, mostly of Pakistan, Somali, Iraqi and Moroccan backgrounds.
There are nearly 90 Muslim organizations and Islamic centers across the northern European country.
Source: OnIslam
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