Sorry, my mistake

On Wednesday I blogged about the latest lists of most popular names given to new born babies. In this article I said that 'What I noticed from the list of the 50 top Boys names in England is that the name Mohammed or its variances appear three times. Mohammed has 3,013 births, Muhammad 2,822 and Mohammad 1,019., That makes a total of 6,854 births which would make it the second most popular name for boys in England, just behind Harry.'

I made a mistake but thankfully CNN were there to fact-check me.

'Mohammed reclaimed its place as the most popular name for baby boys born in England and Wales in 2011 - convincingly ahead of Harry, in second place, according to data released by the government this week.

The government declared that Harry was the most popular boy's name, but if you add up the five most popular different spellings of Mohammed, that name comes top.

Mohammed is also the most popular boy's name of the past five years for England and Wales, ahead of Oliver and Jack. It came first or second every year since 2007, the only name to do so.'

Frightfully important to get these things right!

Now I do realise that one of the reasons that Mohammad (or variants) appear so frequently is that Muslims are relatively unadventurous when it comes to naming their sons and that skews the data. However it is indicative of the rising number of Muslims living in the UK. As that CNN article also reported:

'The country, which was about 2% Muslim in 1990, grew to 4.6% Muslim in 2010, with nearly 2.9 million followers of the faith, according to analysis by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

By 2030, the United Kingdom will be just over 8% Muslim, with more than 5.5 million adherents, the Washington-based think tank projected in a 2011 report, "The Future of the Global Muslim Population."'

A rising Muslim population, if a proportion are radicalised, will not bode well  for Jews or those of other faiths.