Mohamed is now the most popular name for baby boys in Paris’s migrant-populated suburbs, according to statistics released by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE).
The INSEE data from Seine-Saint-Denis looked at the top baby names from 2017 and extrapolated that the trend will likely continue into 2019 with Mohamed being the most popular male name in the district, broadcaster BFMTV reports.
Several other non-traditional French names also made it into the top ten male baby names for the suburbs including Ibrahim at number three, Rayan at number four, Amir at seven, Imran at eight, and Ali at nine. Gabriel, the most popular name in the city of Paris, did not even make it into the top ten for the suburbs.
Of the top 20 names, 12 are of apparent Middle Eastern origin while the list of girls baby names in Seine-Saint-Denis also has a significant number of names that originate from the region, as well.
The new statistics come after Muhammed, and various alternative spellings of the name, were shown to be the most common name in both England and Wales for newborn boys earlier this month.
In Germany, a report from the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache (Society for German Language, GfdS) in January of this year noted the dramatic rise in the number of babies named Mohammed in Germany over the last several years saying that the name had gone from 97th place to 26th place in less than a decade.
As in the UK, the GfdS does not count all the variations of the spelling of Mohammed as one name and so the actual number has the potential to be much higher.
The popularity of the names reflects the growing migrant-background population across Europe and mass migration is now seen as the primary source of population growth across nearly the entirety of Western Europe.