There were total 1292 newborns named Muhammad with different spellings in London in 2012, Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) prove said on Monday.

Meanwhile, abourt 7,139 boys were given Muhammad as their first name last year that is only 29 behind Harry, which had the top occurrence.

This is while a total 729,674 babies born in 2012 were given 64,000 different names.

There are claims that the high frequency of the Muslim name - after the name of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) - is linked with the rising number of Asian migrants in Britain and in London.

Official figures show Indians are now the biggest foreign-born group in London accounting for almost nine percent of all foreign-born residents who constitute 37 percent of the three-million-strong population of the city.

This comes as earlier in May, ONS said one in ten under-25 people in Britain are Muslim, who, based on the 2011 census, comprises five percent of the total British population.

A study, conducted by the US-based Pew Forum, estimated that the total number of UK Muslims is 2.9 million (4.6 percent of the population) compared with 1.6 million (2.8 percent) in 2001. If present trends continue, the Muslim population of the UK will swell to almost double within 20 years, reaching a staggering 5.5 million.

NTJ/BA