You know what I don't get? If you have a world class cool name like "Lou Alcender" why would you change it to Karrem Abdul Jabbar ? It's just been so DONE, you know what I mean? I won't even start with Cassius Clay; now THAT'S a handle..
Oh, just that American white bread middle class handle forced on me by my Presbyterian parents. That's in my past, and now all shall know me as "UROTRASH: King of the BULLSH*TTERS".
Cliff, its considered 'normal' in Islam to have one of the 100 names/description of God or 100 names/discriptions of the Last Prophet (pbuh). Incidently you have both male and female versions of all names. For example, Ali is male and Alizee is female. For my name, Omar, properly pronouced Uh'-mer, the female is Zumer. Cultural thing. New converts like to take up Islamic names. It is not ness., at least not that I am aware of (you prob. can find a few Mullahs who disagree with me on this on). For example, my sister is named "Tanya" which isnt one of the 200 or so above.
Because "cool" is relative. Omar, You are correct. People can't be Muslim by name only. Heck your name could be Lance and you could still be a practicing Muslim. It comes from within as you well know. However, you are correct that new converts usually change their names right away.
I changed my name from David to Dave after that whole Mars exploratory rover fiasco. As my favorite Martians always say, "Less is better." DL
For some reason I always read your new name as "eurotrash" and think of Bmw 318 cars, with the crappy 1.9 liter motors or crappy VW's unreliable depreciate down the toilet cars. Don't ask me why. LOL
See thats the funny part, people think I'm too stupid to spell korrektly.!!! When I get my 330 GTC I'll get the NC license plate "Urotrash"
haha 16...righhttt Oh and for the record, I am not 16 or my posts from when I joined the site 2 years ago would not make much sense...