Assalamualaikum Nadal!

I named my daughter Athena when she was born. Is it the name of one of Prophet Muhammad's wives? No, it isn't.

Is it an Arabic name? No, I'm pretty sure it isn't. Neither is it a Malay name. And it definitely isn't Indian or Chinese.

It's Greek actually. It's the name of the Goddess of Wisdom and War. Semi-goddess, to be exact, since she was an illegitimate child of Zeus.

I chose that name because I thought it's nice that the patron of wisdom is also the patron of war.

To me, it meant that war was something so devastating that it needed someone wise to watch over it.

I also kind of hoped that my daughter would grow up to be wise, strong and independent, like the name.

Isn't that a nice reason as to why I named her that? Of course, I'm not planning for her to start praying towards Mount Olympus instead of the Kaabah!

But there are those who just smile when I tell them this story. Then they proceed to crack their heads to find out if there is an Arabic definition to the name.

Some have even gone so far as to recite Quranic verses to see if there any words that sound remotely like "Athena".

Why lah? Doesn't a name just need to be a good name? In fact, couldn't it just be anything the parents feel is good?

My brother, Aizyl, once related to me something that happened to him during his secondary school days.

He had to attend an overnight prayer session at the school (Muslim prayers, of course!). An ustaz was talking to them about the meaning of Islamic names.

Then, someone asked a question.

"Ustaz! What does 'Aizyl' mean?"

The ustaz look dumbfounded. Then he asked my brother for his full name. My brother told him it is "Aizyl Azlee".

The ustaz looked relieved because he knew of a definition for "Azlee". Everyone then sighed a sigh of relief, as if he was now pure and clean.

"I don't remember what the definition was lah. I just walked out of the surau and left," my brother told me.

My sister-in-law had to convert to Islam to marry my other brother, Izal. She studied and researched the religion, which was all well and good.

Then came the day of the actual official conversion. Her family and our family went along to give her moral support (I just wanted to make fun of her!).

At the religious authority's office, an officer explained what had to be done. Very simple actually. Just recite the shahadah and understand it. Done!

Then he asked if she wanted to change her Chinese name. He also explained that to have a good Muslim name is encouraged.

My sister-in-law looked at us. She had already decided before this not to change her name. It was given to her by her parents who love her a lot.

That, and also the fact that it would be so much hassle to start changing all her official records like bank accounts, identification cards and whatever else!

So she calmly said that she does not want to change her name. The officer just smiled and said that would be no problem at all.

I was impressed! I was expecting a little bit of resistance from the guy seeing the reputation that the agency he is working for has in the country.

The officer was very polite and clear in his explanation. And seeing that my sister-in-law's mother was also there, he warned my sister-in-law to always be good to her mother because family is family no matter what religion its members are from.

I'm not trying to belittle Islamic naming conventions here. I would have no problems giving my kids Islamic names if I found any that were appealing.

I would probably even name my next kid "Sahafi", the Arabic word for "journalist". Oh wait! It isn’t Islamic just because it is Arabic, is it?

But I'm guessing it doesn't matter. If a top religious authority official can just define any name as Islamic (Nadal, Awang, Rafael, Ghafrul, Pandir, Parameswara, etc!), who cares what a name means!

I'm just hoping hard that there are more people in the religious authority agency that are like the officer we met, as they are like its head honcho.

- TMI