Popular names

M

Minerva

New member
For those who are genuinely worried that Mohammed (plus variants of the name) is the most popular name in the UK. Get over it. Names fluctuate in popularity.

How many under five Ethels do you know? How many Olivias and how many under five Sophies? Olivia and Sophie both have moved up in popularity in the UK. For quite a while Sophie was a nineteenth-early twentieth century name. After the end of the Clinton administration the name Monica took a steep dive in popularity.

I have a granddaughter named Ariel. Guess how old she is? All that sort of thing does is label what was popular when your parents were naming you.

Should you be terrified that Islam is taking over the world, please note there is no real correlation with names and political/religious takeovers. The Romans took over the world and did not bother to name anyone Jesus (or its near equivalent, Jeshua) when the entire empire became formally Christian.

When Christianity took over Denmark (Denmark at the time included Norway, parts of Sweden, parts of Germany and Iceland) Danes began to use Christian as a name. Pagans were not allowed to trade in many places. Christians were. Ergo, convert and change your name. One of the converts complained that why didn’t they give him a new set of clothes? Every other time he had converted they had given him a new set of white clothes. Why not now?

My middle name is Elana, leading a surprising number of people to guess my ethnicity and religion wrong. My mother confessed that she named me for Lana Turner, but didn’t want to be too obvious about it. Hence, Elana.

Get over it. I did.
 
While it is true that name popularity does fluctuate, Mohammed has always been the most popular name for boys in the Muslim culture. The fact that it is currently the most popular name for boys born in the U.K. tells me, and it should tell others, that Muslims in the U.K. are having babies at a higher rate than non-Muslims.

Is this cause for alarm? I don't know. I don't live in the U.K.
 
The Muslim population is like 1% in the US, compared to 4% in the UK. And Mohammad is at 1 for the UK, and 400 for the US.

Whatever...
 
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So what if a combination of Mohammed, Mohammad and Muhammad is the most poplar baby name in the UK. I mean seriously, would you rather be called Oliver?

Rather than indicating the imminent establishment of an Islamic caliphate, surely all it suggests is that Islamic types have less imagination than the rest of us when it comes to naming their male offspring.
 
charver said:
So what if a combination of Mohammed, Mohammad and Muhammad is the most poplar baby name in the UK. I mean seriously, would you rather be called Oliver?

Rather than indicating the imminent establishment of an Islamic caliphate, surely all it suggests is that Islamic types have less imagination than the rest of us when it comes to naming their male offspring.
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If they are going to include all Mohammed variants perhaps they should include all John variants, too.
John, Jean(fr), Jean(fem), Jeanne, Ian, Iain, Yan, Jan, Ivan, Sean, Shawn, Shawne, etc etc
 
Bill Maher was worried about UK names

Bill Maher was complaining about the UK names on his show. I don't personally consider him a left-leaning commentator (he hates vaccinations and meat) but a lot of lefties watch his show. I mention it because all of us in this country are going to have to learn to deal with other cultures. I personally believe the naming of children, as is the consumption of old country food, as something that immigrants do to feel more connected with their old lives. (Pizza, anyone?) And there is fashion in names as there is in clothes, which was my original point.

The ideal Muslim world is a theocracy. Muslims do not or aren't supposed to believe in the separation of church and state more than Christine O'Donnell does. Not all Muslims follow this, and there are a separate set of rules for Muslims in non-Muslim states. This will be a sticking point for our country. Let us not see Muslim names as the beginning of a takeover of the Western world, as Bill Maher did. We are used to separating church and state when the "church" was Christian; we can do it when the "church" is Muslim or Sikh.
 
charver said:
So what if a combination of Mohammed, Mohammad and Muhammad is the most poplar baby name in the UK. I mean seriously, would you rather be called Oliver?

Rather than indicating the imminent establishment of an Islamic caliphate, surely all it suggests is that Islamic types have less imagination than the rest of us when it comes to naming their male offspring.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the fact that they're combined could be one of the keys here. The thing about baby names is that the "vote" here is extremely split. The first could be at 0.5% or so, the second at 0.4%, the hundredth at 0.3%. When you take three names that are at 0.17% or so, putting them far down the list, and combine them, they suddenly shoot into a high place.

Or at least that's my theory. Does anyone know where I can find these sorts of statistics so that I can see the generally distribution of baby names?
 
Well, when you combine the three in the US it goes to about 250. The fact that UK has 4x the Muslim population would cause you to expect there to be about 4x more people naming their baby Mohammad, so if I adjust for that by quadrupling the popularity of the name, it still only winds up at around 70th. Maybe Muslims in the UK just have a lot more children and are much more likely to name their kid Mohammad?
 
Watermarx said:
Yeah, the fact that they're combined could be one of the keys here. The thing about baby names is that the "vote" here is extremely split. The first could be at 0.5% or so, the second at 0.4%, the hundredth at 0.3%. When you take three names that are at 0.17% or so, putting them far down the list, and combine them, they suddenly shoot into a high place.

Or at least that's my theory. Does anyone know where I can find these sorts of statistics so that I can see the generally distribution of baby names?
Click to expand...

You can get the figures here for 2009 in lovely spreadsheet form, WM.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15282
 
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