According to the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache (Society for German Language, GfdS), often labelled as the most important language society in Germany, the name Mohammed has seen a rapid rise in popularity, though the name could be even more popular than their figures suggest, Die Welt reports.

GfdS data, like many similar statistics, do not take into consideration all of the different spellings of Mohammed such as Mohamad, Mohamed, Mehmet, and others.

In Austria, the daily newspaper Kronen Zeitung compiled data using all the variants of the name and found that Mohammed soared in popularity from 5th overall to 3rd among baby boys born in Vienna.

While the current numbers in Germany are based on statistics from 2016, the numbers from 2017 will likely be released in the coming months.

In the city of Herne, around 17.2 per cent of the 161,306 inhabitants were migrants in 2017 – up from 16.4 per cent in 2016. That year, Mohammed was the third most popular name in the city.