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Debunked: The most popular baby name for boys in Galway is.. not Muhammad

Rían topped the chart for the county, while the city’s top spot was a tie between Jack and Oisín.

THE FACTOID THAT the most popular name for newborn baby boys in Galway is Muhammad has been shared for years. For so long, in fact, that it has ceased to be true.

However, this has not dissuaded anti-immigration activists from continuing to spread it as evidence that Islam is “taking over”.

“Do you know what the number one name in Galway for newborn boys is?” the anti-immigration activist Philip Dwyer asks in a video posted to Facebook on 5 July.

“It’s not Sean. It’s not Patrick.” he tells a woman he appears to have approached on the street. “It’s Muhammad. Do you think that’s a good thing for Ireland?”

“Your commentary is a bit racist,” she replies. “It’s a name.”

“So, you’re OK with Islam taking over countries?” Dwyer continues.

“I don’t think they’re taking over,” she says.

“It’s the number one name in County Galway,” Dwyer repeats.

“Doesn’t matter” she retorts.

“It matters a lot!” Dwyer says as the woman turns and walks away. 

The video, which has been viewed more than 99,000 times, was posted with a description that questioned whether the woman’s response was ‘why Ireland is in so much peril’, along with links to donate money to Dwyer.

The most popular name for boys in County Galway last year was Rían, not Muhammad. In Galway City, the most popular name was a tie between Jack and Oisín.

0225202_Vital_Stats_Babies_Names_2024_Maps_Boys_names_ENG Most Popular Boys Names by County, 2024 CSO CSO

Muhammad was not the most popular name for boys in 2023 either — it was Jack for the County Galway and, again, Oisín for the city. 

Despite Dwyer’s claim, Muhammad has never been the most popular name for newborn boys in County Galway.

It had, however, been the most popular baby name for boys in Galway City in 2022, the same year it ranked the 86th most popular name in the country.

Its tenure at the top was short-lived; the name was never recorded as topping the city’s list of newborn names any year before or since then.

Muslims have had a presence in Galway City since at least the 1970s (as shown in this old RTÉ footage), which is home to Ireland’s only purpose-built mosque for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.

Figures on the religious makeup of the city alone are not readily available. However, in 2022, the year when Muhammad was the city’s most popular name, there were 3,699 Muslims living in the whole of Galway county, comprising about 2% of the county’s population of 177,737. 

The city’s population is even smaller than the county at about about 86,000. Given the relatively small numbers of Muslims in Galway, how did a traditionally Muslim name top the city’s chart for boys’ names?

In brief, it doesn’t take many newborns with the same name to make it the most popular in an area. 

Jack, which last year was the most popular name nationally (and joint-most popular name of newborn boys in Galway City), was given only 490 times in the entire country.

The CSO doesn’t give exact numbers for Galway City, but we can roughly extrapolate from the data. Galway City has about one-sixtieth of Ireland’s population, which indicates that a name given to about eight newborns would have a decent chance to top the city’s list.

The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) also released some possible explanations for the popularity of the name Muhammad in Britain.

While the size of the Muslim community plays a large part, the name’s popularity is also bolstered by wider society using more variation in naming their children (Rían is one such example of a name that would not have been popular in decades past), while the name Muhammad remains “dominant” in the Muslim community

The ONS also speculates that Muslim minorities might be more likely to name their boys Muhammad “to remind them of their heritage as they grow up in a non-Muslim country.”

Claims that Muslims are seeking to take over countries are common in anti-immigrant groups. However, as in the case of hoax stickers promoting Shariah law in Ireland, the evidence of these claims do not stand up to scrutiny.

This year, The Journal has debunked claims Ireland is establishing a National Hijab Day, that RTÉ is replacing the Angelus with a Muslim call to prayer, and that the largest mosque in the world is being built in Ireland.

The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.

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