:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
Shakespeare said, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” But then if you've seen the movie
Meet the Parents, you'll have realized that your last name matters, at least in U.S. if your name is "Focker." Can you imagine a spotty teenager in high school sporting that name? Oh, the horror! I shudder at the thought of the bullying that person should suffer in the name of being a "Focker" (pun intended!) ;)
By the way, I like your father and grandfather's name; and the name and meaning of those names are perfectly acceptable as Islamic names to have. :)
If people name their children without a name having a particular meaning but because they like a sound, then that's acceptable and wouldn't per my understanding need to be changed once a person converted to Islam.
If your name was a regular name and had no bad meaning (i.e. such as "satan's child" or "pagan" or "war" or "bitter"), then you wouldn't ever need to change it; it is only when you have a name that has a bad meaning does it need to be changed.
In Islam, by the way, children have some rights over their parents; one of their rights is to be given good names. Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) said, "
To whoever is born a child, the child should be given a good name and sound education. And when he becomes of age he should be married."
By the way, if you think names don't really matter in the real world, they do. In law school, we were assigned the book
The Color of Crime for our class on race and crime, in which the author says, "A study done in 2003 found that job applicants who have 'Black sounding' names are much less likely to be called for an interview than those who have 'White sounding' names."
My own name is constantly butchered because my parents decided to choose a nontraditional spelling for a very traditional name; I've gotten used to the butchering of the name, and I don't really care all that much, but I have considered changing it to what is a traditional spelling and only the hassle involved makes me complacent with status quo.
All that said, I like to think that no matter what my name (though I was destined to have this one), I'd still be the person I am today and I like to think my name is not the marker of the impressions I leave in people's memories or footprints I leave on this world; I want the sum of my deeds and the difference I make as a human being to be what is the marker of both.
If tomorrow your name was Bob, you'd still be you, the person with your unique heritage and the product of your ancestors; you changing your name, if you ever wanted to do so, would not change your heritage or you being the entire reason for your ancestors existing.
You know, in some Native American tribes and cultures, they change the name of the person according to the phase in which the person is deemed to stand and another new name is revealed in keeping with the essential developing persona, and this was on account of knowing that we're all changing all the time, and the name, as important as it is, is sometimes about who we are and sometimes about who we want to be and sometimes about both.
format_quote Originally Posted by
jabeady
As I understand it, when a person converts/reverts to Islam, they're encouraged to choose a new, Islamic, name, one that has a particular meaning.
In the West, names theoretically have meanings but no one pays attention to them; in many cases, I personally suspect that these "meanings" are invented by the greeting card companies. Overall, the predominant tendency is to name a child after one or more ancestors, with no regard to "meaning." In my own case, John Henry is the names of my father and grandfather, and is supposed to mean "Ruler of the household by the grace of God." I mentioned that to my wife once, which was a big mistake. :/
Most people probably don't even know that they're name supposedly has a meaning. I'm told there are people who name their children, not because of a meaning, but because they like a certain sound.
I don't know that I have an actual question here, I'm just thinking out loud. I would not like to give up my names. For one thing, there is a saying that no one truly dies so long as people remember his name (I can already hear the folks here commenting on that [emoji1] ), and I have no desire to give up my heritage, or to forget those who came before me and made me who I am. I remember another saying: "At this moment, I am the entire reason my ancestors existed."