Most popular baby names

The Office of National Statistics has just published its annual analysis of the most popular names for boys and girls born in England and Wales in the past year. You can check out the details here.
There are several patterns in this information.
First of all, it is striking how traditional most of the names are for both boys and girls, although for the boys it is interesting that the familiar form of names rather than the original version is often preferred – Jack instead of John (first for the 12th year running), Harry instead of Harold, Charlie instead of Charles.
In the case of boys, three of the top six names begin with the letter ‘J’. In the case of girls, seven of the top ten names end with the sound ‘ee’ and 11 of the top 20 names contain one or more of the letter ‘l’.
On the other hand, the name David – which is the second most common name in Britain – slipped out of the top 50 of names chosen for babies born in 2004.
Incidentally, a reflection of the changing ethnicity of the English population is that the 22nd most popular name is Mohammed and the 44th is Muhammed.
I’m really interested in naming practices around the world and have writte na comprehensive essay on the subject here.