One Name, Four Spellings: Muhammad, Mohamed, Mohammad and Mohammed

Nov 6, 2026 Abigail Adams, Editorial writer

It is often called the most common boy's name in the world. In the American chart, it looks like a footnote — because the chart meets it in pieces.

For boys in 2025, the name arrives in the data as four substantial spellings (plus two small ones):

Muhammad — 1,433 babies (#241)
Mohamed — 534 (#523)
Mohammad — 509 (#553)
Mohammed — 447 (#598)
Mohamad — 47, and Muhammed — 38, trail far behind

Add the four main spellings: 2,923 boys. That combined figure would rank about #123 for boys in 2025 — meaning the chart's headline spelling, at #241, understates the name's real presence by some 118 places. Add all six spellings (3,008 babies) and it would sit around #118.

The consolidation story

The pieces are not standing still, either. Over fifteen years the family has been quietly gathering itself into one spelling:

Muhammad: 464 babies in 2010 → 846 in 2015 → 1,023 in 2020 → 1,433 in 2025. Tripled.
Mohamed: 569 in 2010 → 534 in 2025. Flat.
Mohammed: 380 in 2010 → 447 in 2025. Flat.
Mohammad: 333 in 2010 → 509 in 2025. Modest growth.

In 2010, Muhammad was not even the family's largest spelling — Mohamed was. Today Muhammad alone is nearly as big as the other three combined (1,433 vs 1,490), and all of the family's growth is flowing into it. American parents, across many different heritage traditions of transliterating the name from Arabic, are converging on a single standard spelling. If the trend holds, the chart will eventually show the name where it already belongs: Muhammad's #241 will keep climbing toward the family's combined position on its own.

Why the split persists

Unlike the Aiden or Jackson spelling families — where variants are fashion choices — these spellings are transliterations. Different families romanize the same Arabic name according to different conventions and different countries' habits, and a spelling can be a small piece of heritage in itself. That is also why the "true rank" question has no single right answer here: the 2,923 boys do share one name, but they do not share one spelling, and the spelling is part of what each family chose.

Our advice: If you're choosing among these spellings, you are choosing twice — the name, and the tradition of writing it. Its combined weight (top-125, effectively) tells you your son will grow up among many namesakes whatever you pick; the specific spelling tells the story of where your family writes it from. And if you're just reading the charts: never trust a transliterated name's rank until you've added up its spellings. The chart fragments what the playground hears as one.

The family's standard-bearer: Muhammad, in the full context of the most popular boy baby names 2025 chart.