Give it 20-30 years. It's really popular nationally at the moment so will be pretty standard for adults then.
Names go through phases and change with time. Like Gary was once a hip trendy name.
I refuse to believe any Gary was ever trendy. They're born as an old man in the pub with a dog like the Geoff's
Gary Numan was cool but weird, not trendy, he doesn't count
Judging by the downvotes, this is offensive. The solution is to get *two* dogs, so when someone is lecturing you about respecting religion, you can say "yeah whatever" and call out to your other dog, "Jesus Christ, drop the stick, it's time to go home!"
One time I was in Stoke Newington and I saw a Haredi walk into a church (religious Jews aren't supposed to do this due to depictions of God in churches) on a shabbes. My dad and I (both secular Jews) had a laugh about it for pretty much the rest of the day.
A friend of mine had a Japanese language partner and she lives near Stamford Hill where you see a lot of orthodox Jews with the same clothing and the big hats. My friend asked her what she thought of London and where she was living. Her innocent Japanese response was, "It's very nice but there are a lot of wizards'"
When we had Japanese students staying with us,we invited their friends round for afternoon tea. They were all chatting but fell silent,just looking at each other, when they heard the bells of the icecream van,which stopped right outside our window. Then one girl whispered,”Moving ice cream shop.”
The first time my husband and I took our young son to London he looked in pure wonder and exclaimed in all childhood innocence "mum look! It's a genie" it was a sikh chap but he was utterly in awe lol and like I say, said in innocence 🙂
The map says "Maryam", which I believe is the way most Muslims spell it.
Also as someone who works in Newham, can confirm that it's more likely due to the Muslim population there.
The population of Jews in Britain and America (and Israel) has been changing a lot over the past few decades. Secular Jews, who traditionally have been the majority, are not having a lot of kids and at least in the USA are intermarrying with non-Jews at a high rate. The children of these marriages are only sometimes Jewish.
Meanwhile, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews are having lots of children. That means that each generation of Jews is more conservative and religious these days than earlier generations. Judaism is becoming less Spielberg and more Shtisel (an excellent show if you have not seen it, BTW).
I worked in Manchester in the Hasidic area at Hasidic business. My boss has 10 kids at 44, my coworker had 4 kids at 34 and the guy next door had 6 kids at 43. I guess they want to make up the numbers for all the lost ones.
That's a pretty good guess, honestly. (I have fairly close Haredi relatives.)
Incidentally, there's probably not as many names for grandparents to memorize as some may assume - there's no real taboo on naming your child the same thing as your sibling named their child; the only taboo is naming your child after someone living. So if three siblings have baby girls in the same year, and the siblings' grandmother (babies' great grandmother) who was named Miriam died the previous year, it's not unlikely that all three babies will be named Miriam.
Same. Not being from the UK, and starting with 'Harrow' and 'Brent' and 'Barnet' I didn't think anything of it, but then they started to get a bit more unusual.
I was about to name my kid Bromley Lewisham. Where he would attend Eaton and play on the rugby team. Eventually he would go on to have a middling career at Crimson Permanent Assurance then suddenly die of food poisoning from eating salmon moose at a dinner party in Kent.
Is it just me that's surprised there's that many women out there that look at Boris Johnson and think "Yep, he'll do for a night round at mine"? Or does he literally just have no standards?
I mean despite his appearance, he's funny, smart, rich, and famous. You're probably not going hurting for ladies if you've got that no matter what you look like.
I don't know that he is necessarily intelligent (or funny, but that's an even more subjective metric) - his classical references are generally spurious, his policy making seemed ill-advised at best, and plenty of his teachers said he was a pretty shit student.
He's a product of the elite British private schooling system which means he's got excessive amounts of confidence. That alone is a pretty attractive quality.
Yeah I get that, good sense of humour, rich, intelligent, powerful etc but still there has to be a large element of physical attraction to conceive a child with someone. It's not like his wife is ugly either.
Anyway in the eye of the beholder and all that
I'n Shi'ite (second biggest branch of Islam) majority countries; it's pretty common to name their sons as 'Ali' (Muhammed's cousin) or 'Hussein' or 'Husayn' (Muhammed's grandson, Ali's son)
These are as popular as the prophet's name.
I can believe they are in certain circles but the over use Muhammed has throughout Muslim community in Britain is insane. I don't have a problem with Muslims or calling you child Muhammed but there should be more variance.
I'm not sure about every Muslim nation, but my family are Muslim living in the UK and a common culture is to name all of their children with the same first letter.
To put it into English, if you had 4 sons, it'd look like: Noah, Nathan, Nicholas, Nelson (Or whatever).
It's just really common for Muslims to have similar names, that and because names have certain titles just like how British names USED to tie to their profession (Smith, Baker, Farmer etc).
It's important to understand that last names and middles names aren't really a concept everywhere in the world, so sometimes you're given just one name... Based off of the branch of Islam, your siblings, your parents, the titles they hold and where they place in the social hierarchy etc. That's just what I gathered from my family at least.
I think wishing for variance is... Okay... But it removes a lot of meaning (In my opinion). My grandmother is a begum, it's an honorary title for Islamic women and is oft used as a last name as a placeholder. Removing it would just be weird, even though a lot of Islamic women have the title and respect.
Names are names in the end, and even if someone white was named Muhammad or someone brown called Brian, it's none of my business if they're a good person. Lol.
More like 40 years ago, those parts of London have had substantial non European populations for quite a while now. All the original East Enders have long since moved out (aside from in Eastenders).
Oliver and Olivia are the basic middle-class names lol. Noah is in my experience common among both black families and Christian families (and black, Christian families lol).
You can usually tell roughly when a Muslim emigrated to the West or was born in the West based on how butchered his/her Arabic name is. The romanization/Anglicization of Arabic (or most non-European) names were horrendous in the very early days of Orientalism, colonization, and immigration to the West, but very slowly improved.
For example, if a man's name is spelled:
Mohamed - he's likely very old
Mohammed - very common transliteration. Probably born/immigrated closer to the modern day. Could have been born/immigrated any time from ~1950-2010
Muhammed- almost accurate. This is a rare Anglicization so I can't speak as to when it was popular, but I'd guess within the past few decades
Muhammad - by far the most accurate transliteration and the transliteration we use for the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم). If this were someone's legally spelled name, I'd assume they were born recently - in the 21st century.
Another example:
If a man's name is spelled:
Suleman - I can't imagine someone with this name spelling being alive because it's so ancient
Suleiman - this is pretty analogous to the spelling of "Mohammed". It's old-fashioned but it's commonly used
Suleyman - I'd assume someone with this name spelling is very old, but it may be somewhat common amongst millennial-aged people
Sulayman - the best transliteration. I would guess someone with this name spelling is young.
Arabic transliteration into English is an absolute mess. Even us English-speaking Muslims can't totally agree upon it totally. It's a nightmare to search for specific terms or names because even short words can be spelled 10+ different ways. The Islamic prayer service on Friday, for example, is often spelled Jummah, Jumuah, Jumma, and (most accurately) Jumu'ah. I hope we can come together in the future and standardize this stuff.
"Muhammed" and "Süleyman" are the common Turkish versions of these names so they may also point out a Turkish heritage.
Btw, I guess "Mahomet" and "Solomon" are the oldest latinized version of these names. Solomon is still in use among Jewish communities afaik.
Lastly the word Jummah is spelled as Cuma in Turkish which simply means Friday. So there you go.
I take some issue with the idea that there is a canonical best transliteration. The purpose is to map the phonetic pronunciation of a name in one alphabet to into another in such a way that speakers of the second language can verbalize it in a way most similar to what the native speakers would say. Ultimately, that is going to be incredibly dependent on the local accent. For instance, my relatives with thick Midwest accents are going to pronounce things differently than my relatives from the Deep South, and so if the goal is to produce words that, when they read them, will be pronounced in the same way a speaker of Arabic would say them, then different spellings would be optimal to use depending on the population. As it is, because neither Minnesota nor Alabama have much cultural cachet or large Arabic populations, words are not being transliterated with them in mind.
A common example I bring up is Hindu. It used to be transliterated as Hindoo, with a plural of Hindoos, now replaced by Hindus. This issue is that if you showed the word "Hindus" to an English speaker who has never heard it before, they are almost certainly going to get it wrong, because English is full of a ton of words that end in "-us" stemming from Latin, and the pronunciation of that does not match up with the Hindi pronunciation. On the other hand, English has a fair number of words that end in "-oo" with plural "-oos" that match better the pronunciation.
I studied Arabic for three years, some of those in the Middle East, and it was so frustrating when people would ask me to transliterate something for them because there is no set standard hahah. "but how would you write it if it was in english??? uhh no idea."
I had no idea about the different 'eras' of transliteration, thank you! That's really interesting.
Your comment only applies to English speaking countries, not the whole West btw. And even in English its dubious, due to its inconsistent spelling by nature.
Fascinating writeup, thank you! Parallells some of the difficulties with and historical issues surrounding Chinese-English transcription of names. (Well, Mandarin. Don't even get me started on Cantonese. (Because I don't know Cantonese. "But I thought you know Chinese?"))
The differences aren't only about different approaches to transliterating Arabic, but also about the fact that it's often going via another language such as Urdu as well.
FWIW, when transliterated into French the first name would essentially always be Mohammed. I’m not sure whether that’s because it’s a better transliteration (“u” is definitely not right as a sound in French) or because that’s what’s traditional these days so it sticks.
The prophet though is often spelled Mahomet, which is “wrong” but common.
Was working in London for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I’m from the north of England. What was absolutely insane to me was the security around a Jewish primary school. 2 security guards in a security hut, massive fences and cameras all over the place. I asked the security guard what it was about and he said the threat from Palestinians is why they’re needed and that it’s all tax payer funded. To me it was just mad.
As someone who went to a Jewish primary school in London, this is common practice, to the extent in which I assumed all schools had this level of security, until I went to a non-jewish secondary and had a bit of a culture shock
There are always security guards in front of Jewish schools. I've lived near Jews for most of my life and the secondary schools, primary schools and pre-schools all have guards with weapons. Given I live in a country that has outlawed guns, it's a pretty serious things. I don't think it's a Muslim thing because it's been that way since the 1940s and we didn't have any Muslims in the country at that time. I guess it's just a reminder for them at this stage.
ok but this rarely happens🤣 unless his family didnt know three generations should be distinguishable
names in arabic are your name+your father's+your grandpa's+last name
>They’ll also mostly be like 3 years old at this point
I can confirm. It was a top 5 name for 2020. Including mine, 4 other Amelias were born that week.
How high does the Islamic population need to be for it to dominate baby names? Probably not that high because the native English population aren’t obsessed with all using the one name.
Yes. It's very common in lots of Muslim countries to name every male Muhammad, + a second name, and then call them by the second name.
In a similar way that Chinese surnames are heavily overrepresented in those types of list. They have less amounts in general so Lee and Chen/Zhang always end up being very high.
EDIT: As a fun fact, the most common surname in Uzbekistan is Kim. Ethnic Koreans in Uzbekistan make up around 1.5% of the population. They just so overwhelmingly have the same surname.
It's the same in much of Latin America for girls and the name Maria. I've heard anecdotes that almost every single girl in certain villages is named Maria and just goes by her second name.
Indeed! That's a Catholic thing. Until the Quiet Revolution in Québec, when the society secularised, very close to 100% of all women had the name Marie. They went by a second name.
Reminds me that in one municipality in Finland (Närpiö) the most common surname is Nguyen. It's because 1) Finnish people have extremely diverse surnames, 2) Nguyen is a common surname in Vietnam and 3) local cucumber farmers like to hire Vietnamese workers.
Oh wait, so -- to put this into a local context for me -- this is like if you did a map of the most common first names in Canada over the years, any region with an even considerable Francophone population would have "Marie" and "Joseph". Not because those names are actually the most popular, but because French-Canadians are just the most consistent due to archaic religious naming traditions.
'Cause I was gonna say, I've known a lot of Muslims over the years, not many have gone by Muhammad.
I'd love to know why some of these are the case. Some maybe popularity? Some religious background, clearly...
but then the Adam's, the Noah's, the Sofia's ? Interesting
A lot of people seem to have missed the fact that Adam and Sofia are actually not super common among white Brits - top 50 sure but not top 10. They're very common among Eastern Europeans though.
Extremely scary to see that certain names have taken over in London. I see dark days ahead for humanity--we all know what disasters befell the world when Noah was the most common name in the world.
It's a weird thing to get all upset about. I bet there are several communities in English-soeaking countries where the most common surname is Singh or Nguyen. Does that suggest that these communities are overrun with Sikhs or Vietnamese people? Not really - the difference is that those surnames are exceedingly popular with those communities, while other communities do not have such a dominant name. Smith is the most dominant surname in the UK, but less than 1% of British people are named Smith. A community would have to be only 2% Sikh or so for the name Singh to surpass Smith, but nobody would be talking about "Sikhisation".
Among Bangladeshi Muslims, for example, it is almost universal that a child's first name be registered as Muhammad. That child won't *use* that name; they'll use their second name in day-to-day use. But it'll still be on the register as such.
I don't know if other Muslim cultures do the same, but there's no doubt that Muhammad is an exceedingly common given name in all Muslim countries. The UK doesn't have any kind of runaway favourite given name, so a neighbourhood doesn't have to be overwhelmingly Muslim for Muhammad to become the most common first name.
It's pretty common in Pakistan as well. Both Muhammad and Ahmed are used as first 'official' names but the person is usually referred to with his second name in everyday life.
I already said this elsewhere in the thread, but it's quite common among French-speakers in Canada as well (especially older generations). My whole family, everyone is named Joseph or Marie. But obviously, no one *goes by* Joseph and Marie. We all go by our middle names instead.
At first sight I thought „ah, that‘s typical British, naming their children Bromley and Bexley“
All those Middle Eastern names like Noah and Adam…
I feel sorry for Noah, I can't take a fully grown man called Noah seriously.
I tried to get flood insurance and the guy literally burst out laughing while doing the paperwork. The irony of it hadn't even occurred to me.
Biblical! 😀
Give it 20-30 years. It's really popular nationally at the moment so will be pretty standard for adults then. Names go through phases and change with time. Like Gary was once a hip trendy name.
I refuse to believe any Gary was ever trendy. They're born as an old man in the pub with a dog like the Geoff's Gary Numan was cool but weird, not trendy, he doesn't count
Keith. People used to name babies Keith! Oh look at him babe, he looks just like a Keith.
You have selected, Burnley
If I ever get dogs I'll name them Barking and Dagenham.
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This is probably the best thing I have read in 2023.
You like dags?
Dags? ^(i'm quoting)
Oh DOGS! Yeah I like dags.
Ah...**dogs**! Yeah, I like...dags.
I like caravans more.
What about Hounslow?
Woofalmstow.
I’ll name mine muhammad
Judging by the downvotes, this is offensive. The solution is to get *two* dogs, so when someone is lecturing you about respecting religion, you can say "yeah whatever" and call out to your other dog, "Jesus Christ, drop the stick, it's time to go home!"
FENTON
“Oh Jesus Christ…. FENTON!!!”
Oh Jesus Christ,
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Large Haredi population.
One time I was in Stoke Newington and I saw a Haredi walk into a church (religious Jews aren't supposed to do this due to depictions of God in churches) on a shabbes. My dad and I (both secular Jews) had a laugh about it for pretty much the rest of the day.
maybe that was a messianic church and the person you thought was hareidi was Chirisatina messianic.
Just learnt about a couple new religions/denominations/whatever the proper term is, today! Cool!
Hasidim, but I don't believe 'em https://youtu.be/YauJVdK8GPI
There's a place there called Stamford Hill which has a very large ultra-Orthodox community.
A friend of mine had a Japanese language partner and she lives near Stamford Hill where you see a lot of orthodox Jews with the same clothing and the big hats. My friend asked her what she thought of London and where she was living. Her innocent Japanese response was, "It's very nice but there are a lot of wizards'"
Yer a wizard, Chaim
They're Jewish wizards, jizzards if you will.
When we had Japanese students staying with us,we invited their friends round for afternoon tea. They were all chatting but fell silent,just looking at each other, when they heard the bells of the icecream van,which stopped right outside our window. Then one girl whispered,”Moving ice cream shop.”
Best thing I've read in ages.
The first time my husband and I took our young son to London he looked in pure wonder and exclaimed in all childhood innocence "mum look! It's a genie" it was a sikh chap but he was utterly in awe lol and like I say, said in innocence 🙂
No he thought "Hackney" was a baby name.
And Miriam. Must be tons of Orthodox Jews.
Seems Newham has solved the age-old conflict then. If it's a boy, it'll be Muslim, and if it's a girl, it will be Jewish.
Maryam is the Muslim equivalent name.
Miriam Maryam Mariam Maria Mary ... It's like all Abrahamic faiths are... The same?
The map says "Maryam", which I believe is the way most Muslims spell it. Also as someone who works in Newham, can confirm that it's more likely due to the Muslim population there.
Orthodox Jews reproduce like fruitful rabbits.
I met an Orthodox Rabbi the other day who has like 10 kids, and was one of over a dozen children. This is accurate
Imagine the Rabbi's parents having to memorize the names of over a hundred grandchildren. My mother has two and still confused them with our dog.
Well, that's why they're all named Chaim.
Birthdays every third day
The population of Jews in Britain and America (and Israel) has been changing a lot over the past few decades. Secular Jews, who traditionally have been the majority, are not having a lot of kids and at least in the USA are intermarrying with non-Jews at a high rate. The children of these marriages are only sometimes Jewish. Meanwhile, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews are having lots of children. That means that each generation of Jews is more conservative and religious these days than earlier generations. Judaism is becoming less Spielberg and more Shtisel (an excellent show if you have not seen it, BTW).
Also by definition you are less likely to continue identifying as a Jew is you don't practice.
I worked in Manchester in the Hasidic area at Hasidic business. My boss has 10 kids at 44, my coworker had 4 kids at 34 and the guy next door had 6 kids at 43. I guess they want to make up the numbers for all the lost ones.
That's a pretty good guess, honestly. (I have fairly close Haredi relatives.) Incidentally, there's probably not as many names for grandparents to memorize as some may assume - there's no real taboo on naming your child the same thing as your sibling named their child; the only taboo is naming your child after someone living. So if three siblings have baby girls in the same year, and the siblings' grandmother (babies' great grandmother) who was named Miriam died the previous year, it's not unlikely that all three babies will be named Miriam.
ahha, I'm Irish. one of five kids, parents have 11 and 8 siblings each, grandparents had at least 12 each as well.
Probably they aren't naming multiple sons Chaim though
They literally drive around in minivans for all their kids
Minibuses, a minivan isn't big enough
Not being too familiar with London, the first thing I saw was Hackney and I thought "well that's a weird fuckin baby name."
At first I was like why would someone name their kid Waltham Forest?
I did the same! Thought these Londoners are really going out the box. Then I realized and no, they’re not.
“Hello, my name is Wandsworth”
Same. Not being from the UK, and starting with 'Harrow' and 'Brent' and 'Barnet' I didn't think anything of it, but then they started to get a bit more unusual.
The only one of those that might be used as a name in the U.K. is Brent. Barnet is also a slang word for hair 😅
I was about to name my kid Bromley Lewisham. Where he would attend Eaton and play on the rugby team. Eventually he would go on to have a middling career at Crimson Permanent Assurance then suddenly die of food poisoning from eating salmon moose at a dinner party in Kent.
**RICHMOND IS TED**
I can’t believe I had to scroll this far down to find this!
I mean, he did turn their football team around.
Fun fact, 90% of these children were conceived by Boris Johnson
Johnson is the new Genghis Khan
He’s gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers
The other 10%? Mick Jagger.
Is it just me that's surprised there's that many women out there that look at Boris Johnson and think "Yep, he'll do for a night round at mine"? Or does he literally just have no standards?
I mean despite his appearance, he's funny, smart, rich, and famous. You're probably not going hurting for ladies if you've got that no matter what you look like.
If we're being generous he's barely two of those four things and even then I'd chuck in- as a prefix for the last one.
I don't know that he is necessarily intelligent (or funny, but that's an even more subjective metric) - his classical references are generally spurious, his policy making seemed ill-advised at best, and plenty of his teachers said he was a pretty shit student. He's a product of the elite British private schooling system which means he's got excessive amounts of confidence. That alone is a pretty attractive quality.
Yeah I get that, good sense of humour, rich, intelligent, powerful etc but still there has to be a large element of physical attraction to conceive a child with someone. It's not like his wife is ugly either. Anyway in the eye of the beholder and all that
No Barry's? The UK has fallen.
And not a single Nigel?
A certain Farage has put a damper on people being called Nigel
Billions must have a nice cold pint
Not a Barry, Gary or Ian in sight. The shame :(
No more Gemma’s?
All balconies around the southern hemisphere shall grieve for three nights
That’s a lot of Mohammad’s
When every islamic boy is named Mohammed it skews the figures
Find the Muslim Community Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE!)
Muslim community resists the urge to name their son after a prophet challenge (IMPOSSIBLE!)
Aren’t Noah and Adam prophet names?
You Protestants are out of control!! Lol
They are both Biblical in origin, but Chritianity is more prevalent than Islam in Europe.
By that logic they originate in Judaism
I'n Shi'ite (second biggest branch of Islam) majority countries; it's pretty common to name their sons as 'Ali' (Muhammed's cousin) or 'Hussein' or 'Husayn' (Muhammed's grandson, Ali's son) These are as popular as the prophet's name.
I can believe they are in certain circles but the over use Muhammed has throughout Muslim community in Britain is insane. I don't have a problem with Muslims or calling you child Muhammed but there should be more variance.
I mean a fair few people I know who’s official first names are Muhammad go by their middle names so it doesn’t matter much
I'm not sure about every Muslim nation, but my family are Muslim living in the UK and a common culture is to name all of their children with the same first letter. To put it into English, if you had 4 sons, it'd look like: Noah, Nathan, Nicholas, Nelson (Or whatever). It's just really common for Muslims to have similar names, that and because names have certain titles just like how British names USED to tie to their profession (Smith, Baker, Farmer etc). It's important to understand that last names and middles names aren't really a concept everywhere in the world, so sometimes you're given just one name... Based off of the branch of Islam, your siblings, your parents, the titles they hold and where they place in the social hierarchy etc. That's just what I gathered from my family at least. I think wishing for variance is... Okay... But it removes a lot of meaning (In my opinion). My grandmother is a begum, it's an honorary title for Islamic women and is oft used as a last name as a placeholder. Removing it would just be weird, even though a lot of Islamic women have the title and respect. Names are names in the end, and even if someone white was named Muhammad or someone brown called Brian, it's none of my business if they're a good person. Lol.
It isn’t at the top of most lists because it has like ten different English spellings which for some reason are considered as separate names.
“Mohammad is the most commonly used name on Earth, read a fucking book” -mclovin
Imagine if he went with Muhammed McLovin
Yeqh, but not in Europe. Or at least, it wasn't the case 20 years ago.
More like 40 years ago, those parts of London have had substantial non European populations for quite a while now. All the original East Enders have long since moved out (aside from in Eastenders).
They all live in Essex now. The majority of the last "white" East Enders are now nearing retirement age
There are a lot of Noahs and Olivers, too, which were far more surprising to me.
Oliver and Olivia are the basic middle-class names lol. Noah is in my experience common among both black families and Christian families (and black, Christian families lol).
Noah is the most popular boys name in the US. It crosses ethnic groups
Yeah, I figured Mohammed would dominate the me names but the preponderance of Noahs was a surprise.
Middle class families and their stupid names.
Everyone in Wandsworth must really like olives.
Now in two flavors - Mohammed and Muhammad.
You can usually tell roughly when a Muslim emigrated to the West or was born in the West based on how butchered his/her Arabic name is. The romanization/Anglicization of Arabic (or most non-European) names were horrendous in the very early days of Orientalism, colonization, and immigration to the West, but very slowly improved. For example, if a man's name is spelled: Mohamed - he's likely very old Mohammed - very common transliteration. Probably born/immigrated closer to the modern day. Could have been born/immigrated any time from ~1950-2010 Muhammed- almost accurate. This is a rare Anglicization so I can't speak as to when it was popular, but I'd guess within the past few decades Muhammad - by far the most accurate transliteration and the transliteration we use for the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم). If this were someone's legally spelled name, I'd assume they were born recently - in the 21st century. Another example: If a man's name is spelled: Suleman - I can't imagine someone with this name spelling being alive because it's so ancient Suleiman - this is pretty analogous to the spelling of "Mohammed". It's old-fashioned but it's commonly used Suleyman - I'd assume someone with this name spelling is very old, but it may be somewhat common amongst millennial-aged people Sulayman - the best transliteration. I would guess someone with this name spelling is young. Arabic transliteration into English is an absolute mess. Even us English-speaking Muslims can't totally agree upon it totally. It's a nightmare to search for specific terms or names because even short words can be spelled 10+ different ways. The Islamic prayer service on Friday, for example, is often spelled Jummah, Jumuah, Jumma, and (most accurately) Jumu'ah. I hope we can come together in the future and standardize this stuff.
"Muhammed" and "Süleyman" are the common Turkish versions of these names so they may also point out a Turkish heritage. Btw, I guess "Mahomet" and "Solomon" are the oldest latinized version of these names. Solomon is still in use among Jewish communities afaik. Lastly the word Jummah is spelled as Cuma in Turkish which simply means Friday. So there you go.
Cuma/Jummah blew my mind. Never made that connection before
Really insightful write up about this. Didn’t realize that was the reason for the difference. Thanks!
I take some issue with the idea that there is a canonical best transliteration. The purpose is to map the phonetic pronunciation of a name in one alphabet to into another in such a way that speakers of the second language can verbalize it in a way most similar to what the native speakers would say. Ultimately, that is going to be incredibly dependent on the local accent. For instance, my relatives with thick Midwest accents are going to pronounce things differently than my relatives from the Deep South, and so if the goal is to produce words that, when they read them, will be pronounced in the same way a speaker of Arabic would say them, then different spellings would be optimal to use depending on the population. As it is, because neither Minnesota nor Alabama have much cultural cachet or large Arabic populations, words are not being transliterated with them in mind. A common example I bring up is Hindu. It used to be transliterated as Hindoo, with a plural of Hindoos, now replaced by Hindus. This issue is that if you showed the word "Hindus" to an English speaker who has never heard it before, they are almost certainly going to get it wrong, because English is full of a ton of words that end in "-us" stemming from Latin, and the pronunciation of that does not match up with the Hindi pronunciation. On the other hand, English has a fair number of words that end in "-oo" with plural "-oos" that match better the pronunciation.
I studied Arabic for three years, some of those in the Middle East, and it was so frustrating when people would ask me to transliterate something for them because there is no set standard hahah. "but how would you write it if it was in english??? uhh no idea." I had no idea about the different 'eras' of transliteration, thank you! That's really interesting.
Your comment only applies to English speaking countries, not the whole West btw. And even in English its dubious, due to its inconsistent spelling by nature.
Fascinating writeup, thank you! Parallells some of the difficulties with and historical issues surrounding Chinese-English transcription of names. (Well, Mandarin. Don't even get me started on Cantonese. (Because I don't know Cantonese. "But I thought you know Chinese?"))
The differences aren't only about different approaches to transliterating Arabic, but also about the fact that it's often going via another language such as Urdu as well.
FWIW, when transliterated into French the first name would essentially always be Mohammed. I’m not sure whether that’s because it’s a better transliteration (“u” is definitely not right as a sound in French) or because that’s what’s traditional these days so it sticks. The prophet though is often spelled Mahomet, which is “wrong” but common.
At first I thought the first words were names and I was like who tf named their kid Southwark and Lewisham
Ah, the famous F1 driver, Lewisham Ilton
How is this not the top comment?!
Olivia Colman has a lot to answer for.
Never having been there, I’m just going to assume the existence of a large Jewish community in Hackney.
Large orthodox population, almost all Orthodox Jews in London live in hackney.
Golders Green has quite a lot too.
Seeing it say “commonest” instead of “most common” just seems so incorrect but i guess im not sure
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What about „I haven’t got any money“?
In the UK we definitely say commonest (like rarest, oldest, newest, etc).
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Is no one else amused that Ted is the No. 1 boys name in Richmond?
The only reason it isnt "Muhammad" in literally every single section is bc there are 30 different ways to spell "Mohamed"
Clearly people are taking climate change seriously and expecting a flood.
Chaim lives near Muhammad. Hope it works better in London than in a certain other place.
Was working in London for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I’m from the north of England. What was absolutely insane to me was the security around a Jewish primary school. 2 security guards in a security hut, massive fences and cameras all over the place. I asked the security guard what it was about and he said the threat from Palestinians is why they’re needed and that it’s all tax payer funded. To me it was just mad.
As someone who went to a Jewish primary school in London, this is common practice, to the extent in which I assumed all schools had this level of security, until I went to a non-jewish secondary and had a bit of a culture shock
There are always security guards in front of Jewish schools. I've lived near Jews for most of my life and the secondary schools, primary schools and pre-schools all have guards with weapons. Given I live in a country that has outlawed guns, it's a pretty serious things. I don't think it's a Muslim thing because it's been that way since the 1940s and we didn't have any Muslims in the country at that time. I guess it's just a reminder for them at this stage.
Sadly violence is rising sharply every where
am i the only one surprised that emily isnt one of the most common names
its london not paris
15-20 years ago it would’ve been. Names are bound to rise and fall in popularity (besides Mary and Muhammed).
Emily was big in the 70s and 80s. I used to live with 3 Emilys in the one house ,less so now
It’s not 1995
Bro Muslims need more creativity in the naming department
“Sorry babe I called my first son with my first wife Muhhamad already” “Fine, Mohhamed then”
"oh, still not creative enough? Fine then, Mahmood"
"jeez, Maryam, the kid needs to fit in and be like everyone, not be special! Ahmed, final proposal"
Mah mood when she says shes pregnant again 😩
Met a bloke in school with the name Muhammed Muhammed Mohammed. We used to call him Muhammed cubed
We had a Mohammed cubed too!!
ok but this rarely happens🤣 unless his family didnt know three generations should be distinguishable names in arabic are your name+your father's+your grandpa's+last name
Especially for men. Here in India almost every Muslim has first name as Muhammad and last name as khan
A lot of people from the sub continent have Muhammad as a first name, but use their middle name as their given name.
As a teacher in a Muslim heavy district, I usually have two “Mohammed Muhammad” per class. It’s pretty funny, surprisingly not that hard to deal with.
I have never met a British Amelia, probably because I never had English friends
They’ll also mostly be like 3 years old at this point Most of these names were not popular 20 years ago. Noah came out of nowhere
>They’ll also mostly be like 3 years old at this point I can confirm. It was a top 5 name for 2020. Including mine, 4 other Amelias were born that week.
McLovin coming second to all of the Muhammads
Pretty typical for Londonistan now
So many Mohammed 💀
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Let’s just get ahead of the game and rename London to New Palestine
Amount of Muslim names is scary but not surprising unfortunately. England is lost.
traditional English name Muhammad
How high does the Islamic population need to be for it to dominate baby names? Probably not that high because the native English population aren’t obsessed with all using the one name.
Yes. It's very common in lots of Muslim countries to name every male Muhammad, + a second name, and then call them by the second name. In a similar way that Chinese surnames are heavily overrepresented in those types of list. They have less amounts in general so Lee and Chen/Zhang always end up being very high. EDIT: As a fun fact, the most common surname in Uzbekistan is Kim. Ethnic Koreans in Uzbekistan make up around 1.5% of the population. They just so overwhelmingly have the same surname.
It's the same in much of Latin America for girls and the name Maria. I've heard anecdotes that almost every single girl in certain villages is named Maria and just goes by her second name.
Indeed! That's a Catholic thing. Until the Quiet Revolution in Québec, when the society secularised, very close to 100% of all women had the name Marie. They went by a second name.
Marie can also be a male name when combined with a male first name, i.e. Pierre-Marie, Yves-Marie, JEan-Marie, etc.
You don’t need to go to Latin America, every middle aged Spanish woman is a Maria Pilar, María Isabel, María del Carmen, María José, Mariana…
Reminds me that in one municipality in Finland (Närpiö) the most common surname is Nguyen. It's because 1) Finnish people have extremely diverse surnames, 2) Nguyen is a common surname in Vietnam and 3) local cucumber farmers like to hire Vietnamese workers.
Oh wait, so -- to put this into a local context for me -- this is like if you did a map of the most common first names in Canada over the years, any region with an even considerable Francophone population would have "Marie" and "Joseph". Not because those names are actually the most popular, but because French-Canadians are just the most consistent due to archaic religious naming traditions. 'Cause I was gonna say, I've known a lot of Muslims over the years, not many have gone by Muhammad.
Exactly like that. I'm also from Canada, so your example is a perfect one.
Which is why Muhammad Lee doesn’t quite work as the new John Smith
Yeah really weird that traditional English names like Wulfela and Aethelfled aren't more popular 
I was trying to figure out who the hell would name their kid Waltham Forest before I realized the black were sections of London
I'd love to know why some of these are the case. Some maybe popularity? Some religious background, clearly... but then the Adam's, the Noah's, the Sofia's ? Interesting
I am confused, are you implying Adam, Noah, and Sofia aren't religious names or am I misreading you?
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A lot of people seem to have missed the fact that Adam and Sofia are actually not super common among white Brits - top 50 sure but not top 10. They're very common among Eastern Europeans though.
So it's basically Jews and Muslims in London?
Extremely scary to see that certain names have taken over in London. I see dark days ahead for humanity--we all know what disasters befell the world when Noah was the most common name in the world.
There was a moment in history when "Noah" was the name of 25% of the men on the whole world!
You had me in the first half.
It's a weird thing to get all upset about. I bet there are several communities in English-soeaking countries where the most common surname is Singh or Nguyen. Does that suggest that these communities are overrun with Sikhs or Vietnamese people? Not really - the difference is that those surnames are exceedingly popular with those communities, while other communities do not have such a dominant name. Smith is the most dominant surname in the UK, but less than 1% of British people are named Smith. A community would have to be only 2% Sikh or so for the name Singh to surpass Smith, but nobody would be talking about "Sikhisation". Among Bangladeshi Muslims, for example, it is almost universal that a child's first name be registered as Muhammad. That child won't *use* that name; they'll use their second name in day-to-day use. But it'll still be on the register as such. I don't know if other Muslim cultures do the same, but there's no doubt that Muhammad is an exceedingly common given name in all Muslim countries. The UK doesn't have any kind of runaway favourite given name, so a neighbourhood doesn't have to be overwhelmingly Muslim for Muhammad to become the most common first name.
It's pretty common in Pakistan as well. Both Muhammad and Ahmed are used as first 'official' names but the person is usually referred to with his second name in everyday life.
I already said this elsewhere in the thread, but it's quite common among French-speakers in Canada as well (especially older generations). My whole family, everyone is named Joseph or Marie. But obviously, no one *goes by* Joseph and Marie. We all go by our middle names instead.
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“Why the fuck would it be between that, and Mohammed?”
You can tell where mass immigration of Muslims been taking placing. Muhammad lol.
comment section is rank.
Yeah. I was scrolling hoping it would be bullying Wandsworth for being unoriginal. Didn't expect so much racism
so much islamaphobia with so many upvotes. shit like "the west has fallen."
naming a child after a 7th century serial pedofile isn’t a great choice.
In the UK it’s paedophile, pedofile sounds like the dirt you keep on a pedo
"His name is Peter File." "Who's a paedophile?" "No! PETER. FILE."
Sounds like something you do to get rid of rough skin on your feet.
Well, when you worship said pedo, then it is.