Debunked: The most popular baby name for boys in Galway is.. not Muhammad
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.
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.
Advertisement
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.
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. (Figures on the religious makeup of the city alone are not readily available).
Given the relatively small numbers of Muslims in Galway, how did a traditionally Muslim name top the chart in the city that then had a population of
about 86,000
?
In brief, it doesn't take many newborns with the same name to make it the most popular in a county.
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.
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