×

Our award-winning reporting has moved

Context provides news and analysis on three of the world’s most critical issues:

climate change, the impact of technology on society, and inclusive economies.

Syrian refugees in Germany name daughter Angela Merkel Muhammed

by Reuters
Monday, 21 August 2017 16:50 GMT

German Chancellor Angela Merkel walks near the chancellery in Berlin, Germany June 30, 2016. REUTERS/Stefanie Loos

Image Caption and Rights Information

A Syrian refugee family in Germany names newly born baby girl Angela Merkel Muhammed out of gratitude

BERLIN, Aug 21 (Reuters) - A Syrian refugee family in Germany has named their newly born baby girl Angela Merkel Muhammed out of gratitude to the chancellor for her open-door asylum policy in 2015, hospital officials said.

"The first name of the girl is Angela, the second is Merkel. With this decision, the parents wanted to show their thankfulness to the chancellor," said a spokeswoman for St. Franziskus Hospital in the western German city of Muenster.

Angela Merkel Muhammed was born on Aug. 16, measuring 53 centimetres (21 inches) and weighing 3,920 grams (8.6 pounds), he said, adding the girl was the parents' fifth child.

Her mother, Asia Faray, and father, Khalid Muhammed, arrived in Germany with their then four children at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015.

Merkel, due to hold an election campaign rally in Muenster on Tuesday, lost popular support last year over worries about how Germany could absorb an influx of over a million migrants.

But with the refugee flow now stemmed, Merkel's popularity has recovered. Opinion polls put her conservatives some 15 percentage points ahead of their nearest rivals ahead of a national election on Sept. 24.

It is not the first time that a refugee family in Germany has named its newly born baby this way. In February 2015, Angela Merkel Ade was born in a hospital in the northern city of Hanover. Her mother had migrated from Ghana to Germany.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

-->