Basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played with the Milwaukee Bucks from 1969 to 1974 and with the Los Angeles Lakers from 1975 to 1989. And, like player Hakeem Olajuwon, he underwent a name change during his career.
Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis “Lew” Alcindor, Jr., in New York City in 1947. Twenty years later he was a standout player on the UCLA varsity basketball team (1967-1969). During this time period, the name Alcindor started appearing in the U.S. baby name data:
- 1970: 9 baby boys named Alcindor
- 1969: 7 baby boys named Alcindor
- 1968: 7 baby boys named Alcindor [debut]
- 1967: unlisted
- 1966: unlisted
It stuck around for four consecutive years, and might have stuck around even longer had Lew not changed his name upon converting to Islam in 1971.
In an essay about his conversion, he mentioned that “Alcindor was a French planter in the West Indies who owned my ancestors. […] Keeping the name of my family’s slave master seemed somehow to dishonor them.” So he “became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (meaning “the noble one, servant of the Almighty”).”
His name change had an immediate effect upon U.S. boy names:
| Kareem | Abdul | Jabbar | Kareen | |
| 1974 | 324 | 81 | 27 | 48 |
| 1973 | 243 | 85 | 29 | 30 |
| 1972 | 378 | 98 | 77* | 36** |
| 1971 | 44 | 49 | . | . |
| 1970 | 12 | 43 | . | . |
In 1972, the usage of all three names — Kareem, Abdul, and Jabbar — increased. In fact, Jabbar was the top debut name of the year in 1972. The name Jabarr also popped up that year. Jabar, the best-guess phonetic version, arrived a year early.
Kareen, which had been charting a girl name, debuted impressively as boy name in ’72. And, in a nice show of symmetry, boy name Kareem debuted as a girl name the same year.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played in the NBA for twenty years, but it wasn’t until decades later, in the 2010s, that the tribute name Abduljabbar finally emerged in the data.
Source: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – Wikipedia
P.S. Ahmad Rashad, father of Condola, is another public figure who adopted an Muslim name in the early ’70s.
