The Controversy Over Baby Names

I have two names, but only one exists on paper. When I was born, my parents put my name down as Stephanie, inspired by the Full House character. They thought she was cute and a little spunky, and they also wanted a more convenient life for me—one without the hassle of repeating my Chinese name, Yue er, to Americans who might find it hard to remember.

Though names can be intensely personal, parents’ choices have become subject to public dissection. Earlier this month, the name Muhammad made headlines when the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that in 2023, it became the most popular baby-boy name in England and Wales for the first time. Heated online discourse followed: Wars were waged in Reddit threads over what this meant for England’s future, and Turning Point UK, an offshoot of the American right-wing youth-activist organization, posted a video of the news on X with the caption, “We are being replaced.”

Those decrying the ONS announcement immediately linked the popularity of Muhammad to the shifting demographics of their country. From 2011 to 2021, the number of Muslims in England and Wales grew from 4.8 percent to 6.5 percent, accounting for 33 percent of the overall population increase during those years. Muhammad has steadily climbed the England and Wales baby-name list for decades, and it has held a place in the top 10 since 2016. (The name also has various spellings, all of which are counted separately in the ONS’s annual list—meaning that, taken together, it may have been the top baby-boy name in years past as well.) Annual baby-name lists do tend to reflect changing demographics, Cleveland Evans, an expert on names and an emeritus professor of psychology at Bellevue University, in Nebraska, told me via email.

Take Mateo, a Spanish name that clinched a spot in the U.S.’s top-10 baby-boy name list for the first time last year. It’s the latest example of a name common in Spain and some Latin American countries that has grown more popular in the United States over the past few decades, accompanied by Santiago, Sofia, Camila, and others. This trend was spurred by the rise of Spanish-speaking immigrants over a similar time period and the pride more people are taking in their culture, Pamela Redmond, a co-creator of Nameberry, the world’s largest baby-name website, told me. (The rise of Mateo, in particular, was buoyed by its high ranking in New Mexico and other states with a large Hispanic population.)

But the relationship between baby names and demographic shifts isn’t a perfect science, in part because names aren’t a perfect indicator of cultural identity. To start with the obvious: Names can be changed. I know people who chose to forgo the ethnic name on their birth certificate for an American name, and people who have gone in the opposite direction. Limited data exist to assess the ethnicity or race of the parents who choose names, such as Sofia, that are technically considered ethnic but are popular across cultural lines. Other factors can influence name choices too: Pop culture, for example, might inspire or dissuade parents from selecting certain names. (The ONS report found an uptick last year in babies named after the kids from the Kardashian-Jenner family.) Plus, the longer immigrants stay in a country, the more likely they are to give their children assimilated names to help them fit in, Ran Abramitzky, a Stanford professor who has studied immigration and naming patterns in the U.S., told me.

Muhammad may be considered an outlier in this respect; it’s a name seldom chosen by non-Muslim parents, and it remains the top choice for baby boys in many Muslim communities because of its connection to the Prophet Muhammad. That kind of ubiquity has become rarer in the modern landscape of baby names. In the U.S., the share of babies with a top-10 name has sharply dropped, from roughly 32 percent in 1880 to 7 percent in 2020, as Joe Pinsker reported in The Atlantic in 2022. Gone are the days of five Marys and Johns in one classroom. Now Ashley is spelled in seven different ways, and many parents are drawn to the individuality and novelty of less common names. This turn toward variety, coupled with changing demographics, might have helped boost the popularity of certain traditional names.

The recent controversy over Muhammad has confirmed just how easily baby names strike a nerve. Ethnic names can become proxies for national anxieties and fears. Other names are scrutinized for their unconventional nature (think: X Æ A-Xii Musk, Legendary Love Cannon, Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen). People have intense reactions to strangers’ names in part because they can follow a child for a lifetime—and often publicly, in the era of social media. Naming choices could even say something about parenting choices; calling somebody X Æ A-Xii, for example, might be perceived as a cruel or selfish move on the parents’ part, Redmond noted. The topic also affirms a simple truth about the internet: People like to share strong opinions about other people’s lives.

Annual baby-name lists don’t always stir the pot like last year’s did. If you follow the data, convention is consistent. Fewer people on average may choose the most popular baby names, but the names themselves haven’t changed much in recent years: Olivia topped the annual baby-name list for the fifth year in a row in the U.S. and for the eighth year running in England and Wales. Liam was the most popular baby-boy name in the U.S. for the past six years. Baby-name rankings tend to shuffle around the same few names in the same few spots (Noah, which has been a top-five baby-boy pick in England and Wales since 2017, fell short of Muhammad by a slim margin of less than 300 names last year). Though names inevitably go in and out of vogue, future ones likely won’t look too different from today’s, Redmond said. “Every generation needs to reinvent. But they don’t usually go that far afield.”

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