The name game

The BBC reported that the 'Most popular baby names in 2011 are Harry and Amelia',m they included a list of the top 5 names and wrote about some of them. They did include this wordcloud which hints at what I am going to write about

I took a look at The ONS's own site and the data therein. 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. Apparently according to The Times (14 August): ‘The ONS does not combine variant spellings of names, but if it did then there would be 8,024 children named Muhammad or one of its variants, putting the name in first place.’ If you look at certain areas of England the position is even more stark. For whilst none of the variants of Mohammad appear in the top 10 lists for the North-East, North-west, East Midlands, East, South East or South West, it appears twice in Yorkshire & Humber, West Midlands (where Mohammed on its own is the second most popular name) and London (where Muhammad is the third most popular name on its own). The BBC have form in hiding the rise of the name Mohammad from its readers, I remember writing a similar report last year and maybe the year before as well. Why do you think they do this?