This BBC report https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-45559619 headlines that Oliver is the most popular boy's name, in 2017, here's the top 10
Oliver - 6,259
Harry - 5,031
George - 4,929
Noah - 4,273
Jack - 4,190
Jacob - 3,968
Leo - 3,781
Oscar - 3,739
Charlie - 3,724
Muhammad - 3,691
However if you read much further into the article then the inconvenient truth is shown:
'Muhammad (3,691 boys) and Mohammed (1,982) combined would still not be more popular than the traditional spelling of Oliver. However there are other variations on the name, such as Mohammad (837), Mohamed (269) and Muhammed (450) that would make it more popular if they were all counted as the same name.'
Which THE NAMES ARE really, but the BBC wouldn't want us to know that. The differences in spelling are because it is originally an Arabic name, and so wasn't originally written in the Roman alphabet.
When translated into English the name is spelled it out phonetically hence Mohammed, Muhammed, Muhammad and lots of different options.
None of the spellings are technically correct, or incorrect, as English doesn't possess the right characters to spell the name correctly. Until Arabic or another Muslim friendly language becomes an official language of the UK there will be multiple spellings of the name, but let's not pretend that they are different names.
1 comment:
MuHAMmed - rather a lot not eating it
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