Mohammed tops baby name charts across Europe, highlighting demographic shift

The data reflects Europe’s shifting population patterns, largely driven by immigration waves, many from Muslim-majority countries.

The UK publication analyzed data from 11 European countries, including Austria, Ireland, Poland, Italy, France, Belgium, regions of England and Wales, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands, using data from national bureaus of statistics. In some countries, such as Germany, where migration surged after the 2015 refugee crisis, comparable data was not available.

The review included five common spellings of the name: Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohammad, Mohamed and Mohamad. In Austria, the number of newborns with the name rose by 732 percent since 2000, while Ireland recorded a 372 percent increase and France 127 percent. The Netherlands saw a smaller rise of 13 percent.

The sharpest rise was in England and Wales, where nearly 3 percent of all newborns were named Mohammed. Britain’s Office for National Statistics said the name was the most popular in the country in 2024, for the second consecutive year. In 2023, 4,661 babies were given the name, overtaking Noah at the top of the list for the first time. That figure rose 23 percent to 5,721 in 2024.

Belgium ranked second, with more than 1 percent of babies born last year named Mohammed — double the share recorded 25 years earlier. In Austria, one in every 200 newborns received the name in 2023, compared with just one in 1,670 in 2000. France reported that 0.87 percent of babies were given the name, while in the Netherlands the figure stood at 0.7 percent.

In Poland, the number of babies named Mohammed has risen 217 percent since 2000, but the actual share remains just 0.1 percent in 2023. The figure reflects the country’s restrictive immigration policies. Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of the right-wing Law and Justice party, now in the opposition, warned at the end of his term in 2023 that Polish culture was at risk of being “destroyed” by Muslim migrants from the Middle East and Africa.

Alongside large-scale immigration to Europe, observers say the name’s popularity has also been fueled by admiration for global sports stars such as Mo Farah, Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah and boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Still, the sharp rise in its use underscores the demographic shifts reshaping the continent — changes that in recent years have fueled the growing strength of far-right and nationalist movements calling to curb immigration and deport undocumented migrants.

It is unclear how many Muslims live in Europe today. The Pew Research Center estimated that in 2020, Muslims made up about 6% of the continent’s population. A 2017 Pew report put the figure at 4.9% and projected that under a “medium” migration scenario, the share would climb to 11.2% by 2025. For the purposes of the study, Europe included the European Union countries along with Norway and Switzerland. (Britain has since left the EU.)