A few weeks from now, there will be 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.''

Olajuwon says ''Hakeem'' means ''a wise man, a doctor'' in Arabic.

But ''Akeem,'' which is the way it has 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, some the other.''

Why does he 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.

''I always thought it would be something very complicated to change. But now, I`ve just decided to put the `H` in the front and make it Hakeem. That`s it.''