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Thursday 20 December 2007

Something strange has happened here

The BBC are reporting that "Jack remains the most popular name for baby boys in England and Wales, the 13th year it has topped the list... BOYS' NAMES: ENGLAND & WALES
1. Jack (-)
2. Thomas (-)
3. Oliver (4)
4. Joshua (3)
5. Harry (5)"

This is odd because in June this year, the Times reported that "Muhammad is now second only to Jack as the most popular name for baby boys in Britain and is likely to rise to No 1 by next year, a study by The Times has found. The name, if all 14 different spellings are included, was shared by 5,991 newborn boys last year, beating Thomas into third place, followed by Joshua and Oliver."


What has happened in the last six months to account for this change or is the BBC report skewed in some way. The National Statistics News Release shows Mohammed at 17th (up 5 places on last year).

There is something odd here and I will investigate.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

'The Times' were combining all the different spellings of Mohammed/etc. Which is probably the right thing to do really.

Anonymous said...

I suspect the phrase "if all 14 different spellings are included" would be a good place to start your investigation.

Anonymous said...

you've partly explained it yourself by spelling "Mohammed" two different ways.

Mohammed is in fact 17th, but if you include all the spelling variations, it is 2nd.