The UK’s national statistics office recently released the latest data on baby names in England and Wales.
It says the following: “Oliver remains as the most popular first name given to baby boys in England and Wales in 2016.” But that’s not really true. In fact, the most common name by far is Muhammad.
The issue is that Muhammad is not a name native to English, so it has several spellings, or transliterations, from the original Arabic. If you just look at the top 10 baby names in the data for England and Wales, it looks like Muhammad is in eighth place, with 3,908 boys born with that name last year.
The Office of National Statistics further says that Oliver “has been the most popular boys name since 2013.” Also untrue; that claim belongs to Muhammad.
The list demonstrates that popular culture has had a significant affect on choices of baby names.
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