Muhammad was the most popular name for baby boys in English regions London, the West Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber in 2017, government statistics show, with spelling variations in the name taking it to first place across England and Wales.
Officially Oliver remains the most popular name for newborn boys across the country, with 6,259 born last year. However, it is pushed into second place by Muhammad when slight spelling variations including Mohammed and Mohammad are included, which achieve 6,510 newborns between them.
The one-letter differences in spelling of the name between the three top-100 variants stem from the transliteration of مُحمّد from Arabic into the Latin alphabet, which can be imprecise.
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