Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 11, 1991                   TAG: 9103110190
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

NO MORE AKEEM OLAJUWON

The Houston Rockets All-Star center isn't going into retirement. He's just changing his name - to "Hakeem."

"It's no big deal," Olajuwon says. "I just want to go back to using the original spelling, the way it is meant to be spelled in Arabic."

According to Olajuwon, "Hakeem," in Arabic, means "a wise man; a doctor."

But "Akeem," which is the way it's been spelled since he arrived in the United States in 1981, has no translation.

"Akeem is just the way that many people write my name when they are putting it into English," he said. "Even back at home in Nigeria, some of my teachers in high school spelled it one way and some of them spelled it the other.

"Usually, it was the English teachers who spelled it Akeem."

Keywords:
BASKETBALL