Why UAE dad named his daughter 'Enough'…

After having many daughters , an Arab father was eager to have a boy. During this particular pregnancy of his wife he used to tell her, “Don’t have another girl.” 

The mother to give birth to another girl and when the father learned this, he got so ‘upset’, he called his daughter, ‘Kefayah’, which means ‘enough’ in English. 

The mother wasn’t happy when the father rushed to register the daughter with the name Kefayah, so even when the father called her that name, she decided to call her daughter ‘Eman’, which means ‘faith’ in English. 

Today, Kefayah has a smile on her face as she narrates the story to us. “I grew up with my family calling me two different names - some would call me ‘Eman’ including my mom, and my father would call me ‘Kefayah’.

“When I was a child I couldn’t understand why I was called these two names. As I grew older I started questioning my mom.

“She justified it as saying your father loves one name and I love the other, so why not?,” says Kefayah.

After having too many questions from her classmates about why she had an “unusual” name, she insisted on knowing the answer.

Her mother told her and Kefayah was shocked; because her father loves her the most and never ever treated her badly.

“It’s not my fault that I was born a girl, I didn’t choose it, so I kept on using the name ‘Eman’, to avoid the questions about my weird name,” she added.

As she reached high school, she share her story, and she was surprised with the reactions of her friends.

“Most of them would say, ‘Wow that’s an amazing story’, or ‘Your name is so unique’, and even one girl told me “I wish I had a story like yours so that I could talk about all the time,” so I began thinking… ok, maybe my name is unique and not as weird as I used to think,” says Kefayah.