China has a large number of Muslims, especially in far western Xinjiang province. They have been trying to dilute the population with resettlement of ethnic Han from the east. This is a policy which has been more or less successful in quelling ethnic unrest in most parts of China (including, by the way, Tibet).
It hasn’t been as effective in Xinjiang because 1) The unrest, being religious, has a more dedicated following, and is pursued in a more organized manner, with support from Afghanistan and other muslim nations. 2) I don’t think they’ve been working on the resettlement strategy as long in this area.
Here is an article which provides a bit of an overview.
But it seems likely that there are many mixed names like you describe, and there will be many more as this resettlement/cultural dilution policy continues.
In one of his books {I think it was Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Mecca, usually just called “Pilgrimnage”) Sir Richard Burton commented on exactly this phenomenon, where servants in a crowd (probably unfamiliar with and unused to those crowds) would call out “Mohammed!” while looking for their masters. This, he remarked, makes as much sense as calling out “John” in an English railway station. So it’s an old problem.
I went to Iowa St. University (not many Muslums in the heartland, y’know).
One of our favorite late-night hijinks was to call up the graduate student dorm, at random, and ask for Mohammed in the best middle-eastern accent we could come up with.
For years after first hearing “I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus” by The Firesign Theater, I made a habit of having “my Vietnamese friend” Ah Clem paged at airports and malls. (It’s a running gag in the story.) Now, with pagers and cell phones on nearly everyone’s belt, You seldom hear pagings. Restaurant hostesses still do it, and it’s entertaining to register as Bob Wilde or Al Whig. “The Wilde party, please, the Wilde party.”
The same thing has occurred in Christian-dominated countries from time to time. In my (small) college graduating class of 39, there were 16 guys named John and 7 named Tom.