Popular baby names in the UK see changes in 2008

October 10, 2009 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News

The popular baby names of 2008 saw Jack and Olivia on top while Mohammed and its variations saw a surge in the rankings.

For another year, it seems that the name Jack has maintained its popularity among the citizens of England and Wales as the top male baby name according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) report released in September. Meanwhile, the name Olivia moved up two places in the rankings to take the top spot among female baby names.

There wasn’t much change among the top 100 boys’ names with only three new names on the list: Blake at 91, Ewan at 95 and Zak at 100. However, the top 100 girls’ names saw some shake up with five new entries on the list: Lexi at 73, Florence at 94, Emilia at 97, Maryam at 99 and Esme at 100.

The name Lexi had the distinction of being a rapid riser as it rocketed up 40 places on the list from its 2007 position of 113.

The name Mohammed—when considered with all of its spelling variations—was the second most popular name in the rankings. When considered alone without its variations, Mohammed still moved up 18 places to take 16th in the rankings of boys’ names.

Some controversy arose when the ONS was criticized for not considering all the variations in spelling of Mohammed to be the same name.

“It’s pretty disingenuous to put out these different spellings. The names are pretty much spelled in the same way,” commented Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion.

As only the top 100 names for each sex were published, only three variations of Mohammed were found. However, the Daily Telegraph reported finding five other variations of the name in the rankings putting the total of Mohammed and its variations at second place, just nudging out the name Oliver.

A similar situation occurred in Holland this year where government officials counted the different variations in spelling of Mohammed as separate names, keeping it out of the Dutch top 20.