Rahman

Rahman — رحمن — means the Merciful, one of the two great mercy-names of God in Islamic tradition, opening nearly every sura of the Qur'an in the phrase bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim. Used as a personal name it is typically understood as a shortened form of Abd al-Rahman, servant of the Merciful, carried by generations of scholars including the medieval historian Ibn Khaldun's contemporaries. The Malaysian composer P. Ramlee and the Bangladeshi founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman brought it into global view. Two syllables, deep vowels, a warm closing hum. Rahman feels tender and vast at once — a name that names compassion itself.