Excerpt:
It's a popular myth, and there's good reason for it, that Muhammad is Britain's most popular boy's name.
Except that is apparently what the data presented by the website BabyCentre has revealed this morning. These numbers were widely reported, including by the Guardian (we have subsequently updated our news story to make clear that it is a survey and not official national statistics).
The BabyCentre.co.uk names are simply a sample based on 56,157 members of the site who gave birth in 2014. Reporting on this seems to have overlooked that there are comprehensive statistics available from official bodies, although only up to 2013. Those figures show Muhammad was the 15th most popular boys name in England and Wales and the 52nd most popular in Scotland.