Johannesburg - If you would name your child after the player who scored the game-winning goal in a World Cup victory, you wouldn't be alone.
This is as earlier this year, it was reported that two football-crazed parents named their baby son ‘Griezmann Mbappe’ after the two French internationals, but which footballer inspires the most baby names?
Intrigued by this, Liverugbytickets.co.uk compiled a list of 100 of the best footballers from the past and present and entered them into the names research database forebears.io, to determine which footballer's name is the most common choice amongst new parents.
It found that the most popular footballer inspired baby name is Salah, with over 1.2 million people bearing the name around the globe. The Egyptian King is adored in Liverpool and loved by fans all over the world, especially in Egypt, where it was reported that 1.7 million Egyptian voters spoiled their ballot papers for the presidential election in 2018 by writing Salah’s name.
Meanwhile, Ronaldo comes in second with 463,228 people bearing his name. Both Cristiano Ronaldo and Ronaldo Nazario are widely regarded as two of the greatest players of all time, so it is understandable that parents may name their son after these footballing legends in the hope that he will follow in their footsteps.
Silva ranked third in the world with 84,200 people bearing the name, while Silva is also a popular name in football, with Thiago Silva, Bernardo Silva, and David Silva all sharing the same surname, so picking this name could be a good omen.
Dias came in fourth place with 59,962 people having the name, and Mane was in fifth place with 54,537 people having the name.
Meanwhile, Messi and Maradona are 21st and 23rd on the list, respectively, while Grealish needs to do more on the pitch to gain a following, coming in last (100th) with only one person bearing his name.
In order to compile the research, Liverugbytickets.co.uk sought to determine the most popular footballer inspired baby names. They seeded a list of 100 of the best footballers from both the past and present was obtained through various reputable sources using in-house metrics. Each name contained within the sample was inputted into Forebears.io, a geographically indexed and cross-referenced directory which contains data of thousands of names across the globe, to collect the approximate number of people currently bearing each football-inspired name worldwide.
All data was combined and ranked in descending order to determine which name has the highest recorded number of people bearing it, resulting in the most popular football inspired baby name. The data was collected on October 18 this year and is accurate as of then.