Mohamed is the most popular name in the country for newborn boys in Belgium when all of the variations of the name are taken into account, the latest statistical release has revealed.
The official statistics, released by the Belgian government Statbel, list the name “Liam” as the most popular name for baby boys in Belgium in 2017 with 570 newborns receiving the name. The name “Mohamed” comes in at tenth place with 392 babies given the name that year; but when slight spelling variations of the same Arabic name are taken into account, they represent for a much higher number.
Along with “Mohamed”, the official list of male baby names from 2017 also lists the variations “Mohammed” (143 boys), “Muhammed” (72 boys), “Muhammad” (53 boys), “Mohammad” (42 boys), and “Mohamad” (16 boys) which add up to 718. This does not include other variations such as Mohammed-Ali and Mehmet that would take the number even higher.
In the Belgian capital Brussels, the spelling “Mohamed” alone is the second most popular boys’ name and combined with all of the other variations of the name makes it by far the most popular in the Belgian capital.
French populist website Fdesouche looked deeper into the data and claimed that names originating from the Islamic world made up as many as 44 percent of male newborns in Brussels. The website undertook a similar study based on French newborn name data and found 28 percent of the Île de France region male newborns were given Islamic-origin names by contrast.
In the Belgian region of Flanders, the number of boys with Islamic names reached 18 percent and in Wallonia, the number was even lower at 13 percent. Belgium overall stood at 20 percent.
Last month, naming data from England and Wales also showed Muhammed and the various spellings of the name to be the most popular name for newborn boys in 2017 for the sixth straight year.
In other countries like Austria, the name and its variations are also becoming more popular with a report released earlier this year showing “Muhammed” to be the third most popular male baby name in the alpine country.
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