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When I first moved from London to Spain about ten years ago, and a man introduced himself to me by saying "Hi, I'm Jesus" I nearly burst out laughing; I couldn't help it, it just sounded so funny coming from a clean-cut Latino. I got used to it though, because over the next few weeks I kept meeting or being introduced to "Jesusses". Not surprisingly, since according to data available on the website of the Spanish National Institute of Statistics, 13.9 men out of every 1000 in Spain are called Jesus, making it the 9th most popular name for males in the country.

Looking back, it seems very silly to have reacted like that to the first "Jesus" I met. After all, I had just moved to the country from England, where according to the Times Online "Muhammad is now second only to Jack as the most popular name for baby boys in Britain and is likely to rise to No 1 by next year [2008]". I had worked and studied with several "Muhammad's", but I was never once close to bursting out laughing when a man introduced himself by saying, "Hi, I am Muhammad".

And yet, both Jesus and Muhammad were prophets, so there is nothing funnier about calling your son Jesus than Muhammad. Nevertheless, just like me, fewer people probably react the way I did when they are introduced to a Mohammad than when they are introduced to a Jesus. Why?

"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost:" the prayer says it all, there is only one son, Jesus. Perhaps this is why it is not at all common to call your son "Jesus". Muhammad, on the other hand, is not so much known as a son, but rather as the Arab prophet who founded Islam. So, as a Muslim, what more symbolic, honorable and promising name to give your son than the name of the prophet Muhammad? It makes sense. According to the online Wikipedia "The name became common among Muslims already during his [the Prophet Muhammad] generation of Muslim men".

If we then take into account that, according to the BBC website, Islam is the second largest religion in the world with over 1 billion followers, and that in 2001 "census recorded 1,591,000 Muslims in the UK, around 2.7% of the population," it comes as no surprise that Muhammad has become one of the most popular -or perhaps even the most popular- boy's names in the UK and probably in the world.

The fact that in the Roman alphabet there are many different spellings of the name, ranging from Mohammed to Mohamud to Mohammod, is probably largely explained by the fact that they are all transliterations of the original Arab name into the Roman alphabet, based on the phonetic sounds of the name.

It is interesting to know that, besides a first name, Muhammad is also a very popular surname. According to the online Wikipedia it ranked 4,194 out of 88,799 as a surname for people of all ages in the 1990 U.S. Census.

Here's a detail I can't help finding slightly amusing. If you ask ten random people in the streets of London, for example, to name a famous "Mohammad" other than the Prophet Mohammad, the chances are they will all say "Mohammad Ali", the US boxer. Likewise, when you search for "Mohammad's" on the Internet, you very easily come across boxer Mohammad Ali. Indeed, according to the Wikipedia Mohammad Ali was recently voted into Forbes Celebrity 100 and received a Spirit of America Award calling him the most recognized American in the world.

So what is amusing about that? The fact that perhaps the second most famous Mohammad among the so many Mohammads in the world, among the so many men who were given the name Mohammad at birth, was actually born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., everything but Mohammad.

Learn more about this author, HannaW.
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