There soon will be no more Akeem Olajuwon, the All-Star center who plays for the Houston Rockets.
But Olajuwon isn't leaving professional basketball, he's merely adding a little something to life.The small adjustment is an "H" tacked onto the beginning of his first name.
"It's no big deal," Olajuwon said. "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." "Akeem," which is the way it's been spelled since he arrived in the United States in 1981, has no translation.
Why does Akeem want to change his name now?
"I didn't really think it mattered when I first came here and they spelled it that way at the University of Houston," he said. "But when I would go back home or when I would talk to my mother, she would ask me why my name has changed.
"But now I've just decided to put the `H' in the front and make it Hakeem. That's it."
Sports fans and announcers need not worry, though. The pronunciation remains the same.